Bibcode
van Zyl, L.; Charles, P. A.; Arribas, S.; Naylor, T.; Mediavilla, E.; Hellier, C.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 350, Issue 2, pp. 649-656.
Advertised on:
5
2004
Citations
17
Refereed citations
13
Description
We present integral field spectroscopy of X2127+119, the luminous X-ray
binary in the globular cluster M15, obtained with INTEGRAL/WYFFOS on the
William Herschel Telescope. We find that tomograms of HeIIλ4686
line profiles appear to be incompatible with the previously assumed view
of X2127+119, in which the binary consists of a 1.4-Msolar
neutron star and a 0.8-Msolar subgiant companion near the
main-sequence turn-off for M15. Our data imply a much smaller mass ratio
M2/MX of ~0.1. We find that models of X2127+119
with black hole compact objects give a poor fit to our data, while a
neutron-star compact object is consistent with the data, implying that
the companion of X2127+119 may have a much lower mass (~0.1
Msolar) than previously assumed. As a ~0.1-Msolar
main-sequence star would be unable to fill its Roche lobe in a binary
with the orbital period of X2127+119 (17.1 h), the companion is likely
to be the remnant of a significantly more massive star which has had
most of its envelope stripped away.