APT5 - Alternative Black Hole Models |
Speaker_ |
Jonker, Peter |
Talk _ |
An observers view of X-ray binaries and soft X-ray transients |
Abstract _ |
Observations of Soft X-ray Transients (SXTs) with Chandra and XMM-Newton turned out to have a profound impact on two important areas of high energy astrophysics. One of which is on the study of cooling neutron stars. The spectra of many neutron star SXTs in quiescence was found to be well-fit by a neutron star atmosphere model (NSA) sometimes supplemented with a power-law component. Model fits especially to those cases where the accretion history is well known, such as quasi-persistent sources (sources that have accreted matter at a high rate for ~10 years) provide good test grounds for theoretical models. I will review the observational properties of several of these systems. |