Bibcode
Park, Samuel; Garcia, M. R.
Bibliographical reference
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #144.25; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
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1
2011
Citations
2
Refereed citations
2
Description
For nearly a century Black holes have been a hot topic, a physical
singularity or simply a flawed, all be it brilliant, mathematical
concept? Fundamental proof of the existence of black holes lies in the
proof of the existence of their event horizons. One such proof lies in
the comparison of the X-ray luminosities of black hole and neutron star
X-ray transients however this proof assumes that both NS and BH
transients continue to accrete at low Mdot during quiescence. Cen X-4 is
the prototype NS X-ray transient, and this work is compared to
A06020-00, the prototype BH X-ray Transient. As part of this comparison
we obtained the first short-wavelength UV spectrum of Cen X-4 in 2004
with HST STIS and obtained simultaneous X-ray data with Chandra.
Interestingly, the X-ray flux was found to decrease by a factor of
three, while the UV was down by a factor of two. We report on our search
for evidence for a disk in the UV and optical spectra, even at these
very low Mdot levels. We have extracted the highest quality spectrum
from the HST STIS and Chandra data, and compared Cen X -4 to A0620,
searching for hints as to the accretion, emission mechanisms and
ultimately the existence of their event horizons. This research as been
jointly funded by the University of Southampton and the
Harvard-Smithsonian center for astrophysics.