arXiv subjects

Hua Feng

Publications and source records attributed to Hua Feng.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

The enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry mission - eXTP

In this paper we present the enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry mission - eXTP. eXTP is a space science mission designed to study fundamental physics under extreme conditions of density, gravity and magnetism. The mission aims at determining the equation of state of matter at supra-nuclear density, measuring effects of QED, and understanding the dynamics of matter in strong-field gravity. In addition to investigating fundamental physics, eXTP will be a very powerful observatory for astrophysics that will provide observations of unprecedented quality on a variety of galactic and extragalactic objects. In particular, its wide field monitoring capabilities will be highly instrumental to detect the electro-magnetic counterparts of gravitational wave sources. The paper provides a detailed description of: (1) the technological and technical aspects, and the expected performance of the instruments of the scientific payload; (2) the elements and functions of the mission, from the spacecraft to the ground segment.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2018

Evidence for Optically Thick, Eddington-limited Winds Driven by Supercritical Accretion

Supercritical accretion onto compact objects powers a massive wind that is optically thick and Eddington-limited. If most of the hard X-rays from the central disk are obscured by the wind, the source will display a blackbody-like spectrum with a luminosity scaled with the mass of the compact object. From the Chandra archive of nearby galaxies, we selected a sample of luminous and very soft sources and excluded contaminations from foreground objects and supernova remnants. They are found to be preferentially associated with late-type galaxies. The majority of sources in our sample are either too hot or too luminous to be explained by nuclear burning on the surface of white dwarfs, and are argued to be powered by accretion. The most likely explanation is that they are due to emission from the photosphere of a wind driven by supercritical accretion onto compact objects. Their blackbody luminosity ranges from ~10^37 to nearly 10^40 erg/s, indicative of the presence of both neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes. The blackbody luminosity also shows a possible bimodal distribution, albeit at low significance, peaked around the Eddington limit for neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes, respectively. If this can be confirmed, it will be smoking gun evidence that supercritical accretion powers thick winds. Based on a wind model, the inferred mass accretion rate of these objects is around a few hundred times the Eddington rate, suggesting that they may be intermediate between the canonical ultraluminous X-ray sources and SS 433 in terms of the accretion rate.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

Chandra Survey of Nearby Galaxies: Testing the Accretion Model for Low-luminosity AGNs

From a Chandra sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in nearby galaxies, we find that for low-luminosity AGNs (LLAGNs), either the intrinsic absorption column density, or the fraction of absorbed AGNs, positively scales with the Eddington ratio for $L_{\rm bol}/L_{\rm Edd} \lesssim 10^{-2}$. Such a behavior, along with the softness of the X-ray spectrum at low luminosities, is in good agreement with the picture that they are powered by hot accretion flows surrounding supermassive black holes. Numerical simulations find that outflows are inevitable with hot accretion flows, and the outflow rate is correlated with the innermost accretion rate in the low-luminosity regime. This agrees well with our results, suggesting that the X-ray absorption originates from or is associated with the outflow material. Gas and dust on larger scales may also produce the observed correlation. Future correlation analysis may help differentiate the two scenarios.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

Evidence for precession due to supercritical accretion in ultraluminous X-ray sources

Most ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are thought to be supercritical accreting compact objects, where massive outflows are inevitable. Using the long-term monitoring data with the Swift X-ray Telescope, we identified a common feature in bright, hard ULXs: they display a quasi-periodic modulation in their hard X-ray band but not in their soft band. As a result, some sources show a bimodal distribution on the hardness intensity map. We argue that these model-independent results can be well interpreted in a picture that involves supercritical accretion with precession, where the hard X-ray emission from the central funnel is more or less beamed, while the soft X-rays may arise from the photosphere of the massive outflow and be nearly isotropic. It implies that precession may be ubiquitous in supercritical systems, such as the Galactic microquasar SS~433. How the hard X-rays are modulated can be used to constrain the angular distribution of the hard X-ray emission and the geometry of the accretion flow. We also find that two ULX pulsars (NGC 5907 ULX-1 and NGC 7793 P13) show similar behaviors but no bimodal distribution, which may imply that they have a different beaming shape or mechanism.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2017

PHL 6625: A Minor Merger-Associated QSO Behind NGC 247

PHL 6625 is a luminous quasi-stellar object (QSO) at z = 0.3954 located behind the nearby galaxy NGC 247 (z = 0.0005). Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations revealed an arc structure associated with it. We report on spectroscopic observations with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and multiwavelength observations from the radio to the X-ray band for the system, suggesting that PHL 6625 and the arc are a close pair of merging galaxies, instead of a strong gravitational lens system. The QSO host galaxy is estimated to be (4-28) x 10^10 M_sun, and the mass of the companion galaxy of is estimated to be M_* = (6.8 +/- 2.4) x 10^9 M_sun, suggesting that this is a minor merger system. The QSO displays typical broad emission lines, from which a black hole mass of about (2-5) x 10^8 M_sun and an Eddington ratio of about 0.01-0.05 can be inferred. The system represents an interesting and rare case where a QSO is associated with an ongoing minor merger, analogous to Arp 142.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2017

Chandra Survey of Nearby Galaxies: A Significant Population of Candidate Central Black Holes in Late-type Galaxies

Based on the Chandra data archive as of March 2016, we have identified 314 candidate active galactic nuclei in 719 galaxies located closer than 50 Mpc, among them late-type (Hubble types Sc and later) galaxies that previously had been classified from optical observations as containing star-forming (H II) nuclei. These late-type galaxies comprise a valuable subsample to search for low-mass (<~ 10^6 solar masses) central black holes. For the sample as a whole, the overall dependence of the fraction of active nuclei on galaxy type and nuclear spectral classification is consistent with previous results based on optical surveys. We detect 51 X-ray cores among the 163 H II nuclei and estimate that, very conservatively, ~74% of them with luminosities above 10^38 erg/s are not contaminated by X-ray binaries; the fraction increases to ~92% for X-ray cores with a luminosity of 10^39 erg/s or higher. This allows us to estimate a black hole occupation fraction of >~ 21% in these late-type, many bulgeless, galaxies.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2017

Ultraluminous X-Ray Sources

We review observations of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). X-ray spectroscopic and timing studies of ULXs suggest a new accretion state distinct from those seen in Galactic stellar-mass black hole binaries. The detection of coherent pulsations indicates the presence of neutron-star accretors in three ULXs and therefore apparently super-Eddington luminosities. Optical and X-ray line profiles of ULXs and the properties of associated radio and optical nebulae suggest that ULXs produce powerful outflows, also indicative of super-Eddington accretion. We discuss models of super-Eddington accretion and their relation to the observed behaviors of ULXs. We review the evidence for intermediate mass black holes in ULXs. We consider the implications of ULXs for super-Eddington accretion in active galactic nuclei, heating of the early universe, and the origin of the black hole binary recently detected via gravitational waves.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2017

Electron Track Reconstruction and Improved Modulation for Photoelectric X-ray Polarimetry

The key to photoelectric X-ray polarimetry is the determination of the emission direction of photoelectrons. Because of the low mass of an electron, the ionisation trajectory is not straight and the useful information needed for polarimetry is stored mostly in the initial part of the track where less energy is deposited. We present a new algorithm, based on the shortest path problem in graph theory, to reconstruct the 2D electron track from the measured image that is blurred due to transversal diffusion along drift and multiplication in the gas chamber. Compared with previous methods based on moment analysis, this algorithm allows us to identify the photoelectric interaction point more accurately and precisely for complicated tracks resulting from high energy photons or low pressure chambers. This leads to a better position resolution and a higher degree of modulation toward high energy X-rays. The new algorithm is justified using simulations and measurements with the gas pixel detector (GPD), and it should also work for other polarimetric techniques such as a time projection chamber (TPC). As the improvement is restricted in the high energy band, this new algorithm shows limited improvement for the sensitivity of GPD polarimeters, but it may have a larger potential for low-pressure TPC polarimeters.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2017

Testing the axion-conversion hypothesis of 3.5 keV emission with polarization

The recently measured 3.5 keV line in a number of galaxy clusters, the Andromeda galaxy (M31) and the Milky Way (MW) center can be well accounted for by a scenario in which dark matter decays to axion-like particles (ALPs) and subsequently convert to 3.5 keV photons in magnetic fields of galaxy clusters or galaxies. We propose to test this hypothesis by performing X-ray polarization measurements. Since ALPs can only couple to photons with polarization orientation parallel to magnetic field, we can confirm or reject this model by measuring the polarization of 3.5 keV line and comparing it to the orientation of magnetic field. We discuss luminosity and polarization measurements for both galaxy cluster and spiral galaxy, and provide a general relation between polarization and galaxy inclination angle. This effect is marginally detectable with X-ray polarimetry detectors currently under development, such as the enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarization (eXTP), the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) and the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer (XIPE). The sensitivity can be further improved in the future with detectors of larger effective area or better energy resolutions.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2016

Chandra Survey of Nearby Galaxies: The Catalog

We searched in the public archive of the Chandra X-ray Observatory as of March 2016 and assembled a sample of 719 galaxies within 50 Mpc with ACIS observations available. By cross-correlation with the optical or near-infrared nuclei of these galaxies, 314 of them are identified to have an X-ray active galactic nucleus (AGN). The majority of them are low-luminosity AGNs and are unlikely X-ray binaries based upon their spatial distribution and luminosity functions. The AGN fraction is around 60% for elliptical galaxies and early-type spirals, but drops to roughly 20% for Sc and later types, consistent with previous findings in the optical. However, the X-ray survey is more powerful in finding weak AGNs, especially from regions with active star formation that may mask the optical AGN signature. For example, 31% of the H II nuclei are found to harbor an X-ray AGN. For most objects, a single power-law model subject to interstellar absorption is adequate to fit the spectrum, and the typical photon index is found to be around 1.8. For galaxies with a non-detection, their stacked Chandra image shows an X-ray excess with a luminosity of a few times 10^37 erg/s on average around the nuclear region, possibly composed of faint X-ray binaries. This paper reports on the technique and results of the survey; in-depth analysis and discussion of the results will be reported in forthcoming papers.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2016

Sentiment Classification of Food Reviews

Sentiment analysis of reviews is a popular task in natural language processing. In this work, the goal is to predict the score of food reviews on a scale of 1 to 5 with two recurrent neural networks that are carefully tuned. As for baseline, we train a simple RNN for classification. Then we extend the baseline to GRU. In addition, we present two different methods to deal with highly skewed data, which is a common problem for reviews. Models are evaluated using accuracies.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2016

Nature of the soft ULX in NGC 247: super-Eddington outflow and transition between the supersoft and soft ultraluminous regimes

We report on XMM-Newton/Chandra/Swift/HST observations of the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in NGC 247, which is found to make transitions between the supersoft ultraluminous (SSUL) regime with a spectrum dominated by a cool ($\sim 0.1$ keV) blackbody component and the soft ultraluminous (SUL) regime with comparable luminosities shared by the blackbody and power-law components. Multi-epoch observations revealed an anti-correlation between the blackbody radius and temperature, $R_{\rm bb} \propto T_{\rm bb}^{-2.8 \pm 0.3}$, ruling out a standard accretion disk as the origin of the soft X-ray emission. The soft X-ray emission is much more variable on both short and long timescales in the SSUL regime than in the SUL regime. We suggest that the SSUL regime may be an extension of the ultraluminous state toward the high accretion end, being an extreme case of the SUL regime, with the blackbody emission arising from the photosphere of thick outflows and the hard X-rays being emission leaked from the embedded accretion disk via the central low-density funnel or advected through the wind. However, the scenario that the supersoft ULXs are standard ULXs viewed nearly edge-on cannot be ruled out. Flux dips on a timescale of 200 s were observed. The dips cannot be explained by an increase of absorption, but could be due to the change of accretion rate or related to thermal fluctuations in the wind or disk. The optical emission of NGC 247 ULX exhibits a blackbody spectrum at a temperature of 19,000 K with a radius of 20 $R_\odot$, likely arising from an OB supergiant companion star.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2015

A Transmissive X-ray Polarimeter Design For Hard X-ray Focusing Telescopes

The X-ray Timing and Polarization (XTP) is a mission concept for a future space borne X-ray observatory and is currently selected for early phase study. We present a new design of X-ray polarimeter based on the time projection gas chamber. The polarimeter, placed above the focal plane, has an additional rear window that allows hard X-rays to penetrate (a transmission of nearly 80% at 6 keV) through it and reach the detector on the focal plane. Such a design is to compensate the low detection efficiency of gas detectors, at a low cost of sensitivity, and can maximize the science return of multilayer hard X-ray telescopes without the risk of moving focal plane instruments. The sensitivity in terms of minimum detectable polarization, based on current instrument configuration, is expected to be 3% for a 1mCrab source given an observing time of 10^5 s. We present preliminary test results, including photoelectron tracks and modulation curves, using a test chamber and polarized X-ray sources in the lab.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2015

LAMP: a micro-satellite based soft X-ray polarimeter for astrophysics

The Lightweight Asymmetry and Magnetism Probe (LAMP) is a micro-satellite mission concept dedicated for astronomical X-ray polarimetry and is currently under early phase study. It consists of segmented paraboloidal multilayer mirrors with a collecting area of about 1300 cm^2 to reflect and focus 250 eV X-rays, which will be detected by position sensitive detectors at the focal plane. The primary targets of LAMP include the thermal emission from the surface of pulsars and synchrotron emission produced by relativistic jets in blazars. With the expected sensitivity, it will allow us to detect polarization or place a tight upper limit for about 10 pulsars and 20 blazars. In addition to measuring magnetic structures in these objects, LAMP will also enable us to discover bare quark stars if they exist, whose thermal emission is expected to be zero polarized, while the thermal emission from neutron stars is believed to be highly polarized due to plasma polarization and the quantum electrodynamics (QED) effect. Here we present an overview of the mission concept, its science objectives and simulated observational results.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2015

A Luminous X-ray Flare From The Nucleus of The Dormant Bulgeless Spiral Galaxy NGC 247

NGC 247 is a nearby late-type bulgeless spiral galaxy that contains an inactive nucleus. We report a serendipitous discovery of an X-ray flare from the galaxy center with a luminosity up to 2*10^39 erg/s in the 0.3-10 keV band with XMM-Newton. A Chandra observation confirms that the new X-ray source is spatially coincident with the galaxy nucleus. The XMM-Newton data revealed a hard power-law spectrum with a spectral break near 3-4 keV, no pulsations on timescales longer than 150 ms, and a flat power spectrum consistent with Poisson noise from 1 mHz to nearly 10 Hz. Follow-up observations with Swift detected a second flux peak followed by a luminosity drop by factor of almost 20. The spectral and temporal behaviors of the nuclear source are well consistent with the scenario that the flare was due to an outburst of a low-mass X-ray binary that contains a stellar-mass black hole emitting near its Eddington limit at the peak. However, it cannot be ruled out that the sudden brightening in the nucleus was due to accretion onto a possible low-mass nuclear black hole, fed by a tidally disrupted star or a gas cloud; the MAXI observations limit the peak luminosity of the flare to less than ~10^43 erg/s, suggesting that it is either a low mass black hole or an inefficient tidal disruption event (TDE).

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2015

Transition of an X-ray binary to the hard ultraluminous state in the blue compact dwarf galaxy VII Zw 403

We examine the X-ray spectra of VII Zw 403, a nearby low-metallicity blue compact dwarf (BCD) galaxy. The galaxy has been observed to contain an X-ray source, likely a high mass X-ray binary (HMXB), with a luminosity of 1.3-23x10^38 erg s^-1 in the 0.3-8 keV energy range. A new Suzaku observation shows a transition to a luminosity of 1.7x10^40 erg s^-1 [0.3-8 keV], higher by a factor of 7-130. The spectra from the high flux state are hard, best described by a disk plus Comptonization model, and exhibit curvature at energies above 5 keV. This is consistent with many high-quality ultraluminous X-ray source spectra which have been interpreted as stellar mass black holes (StMBH) accreting at super-Eddington rates. However, this lies in contrast to another HMXB in a low-metallicity BCD, I Zw 18, that exhibits a soft spectrum at high flux, similar to Galactic black hole binaries and has been interpreted as a possible intermediate mass black hole. Determining the spectral properties of HMXBs in BCDs has important implications for models of the Epoch of Reionization. It is thought that the main component of X-ray heating in the early universe was dominated by HMXBs within the first galaxies. Early galaxies were small, metal-deficient, star forming galaxies with large H I mass fractions --- properties shared by local BCDs we see today. Understanding the spectral evolution of HMXBs in early universe analogue galaxies, such as BCDs, is an important step in estimating their contribution to the heating of the intergalactic medium during the Epoch of Reionization. The strong contrast between the properties of the only two spectroscopically studied HMXBs within BCDs motivates further study on larger samples of HMXBs in low metallicity environments in order to properly estimate the X-ray heating in the early universe.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2014

Single-Epoch Black Hole Mass Estimators For Broad-Line Active Galactic Nuclei: Recalibrating Hbeta with A New Approach

Based on an updated Hbeta reverberation mapping (RM) sample of 44 nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN), we propose a novel approach for black hole (BH) mass estimation using two filtered luminosities computed from single-epoch (SE) AGN spectra around the Hbeta region. We found that the two optimal-filter luminosities extract virial information (size and virial velocity of the broad line region, BLR) from the spectra, justifying their usage in this empirical BH mass estimator. The major advantages of this new recipe over traditional SE BH mass estimators utilizing continuum luminosity and broad line width are: 1) it has a smaller intrinsic scatter of 0.28 dex calibrated against RM masses; 2) it is extremely simple to use in practice, without any need to decompose the spectrum; 3) it produces unambiguous and highly repeatable results even with low signal-to-noise spectra. The combination of the two luminosities can also cancel out, to some extent, systematic luminosity errors potentially introduced by uncertainties in distance or flux calibration. In addition, we recalibrated the traditional SE mass estimators using broad Hbeta full width at half maximum (FWHM) and monochromatic continuum luminosity at 5100A (L_5100). We found that using the best-fit slopes on FWHM and L_5100 (derived from fitting the BLR radius-luminosity relation and the correlation between rms line dispersion and SE FWHM, respectively) rather than simple assumptions (e.g., 0.5 for L_5100 and 2 for FWHM) leads to more precise SE mass estimates, improving the intrinsic scatter from 0.41 dex to 0.36 dex with respect to the RM masses. We compared different estimators and discussed their applications to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) quasar sample. Due to the limitations of the current RM sample, application of any SE recipe calibrated against RM masses to distant quasars should be treated with caution.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2014

Spectral State Transitions of the Ultraluminous X-ray Source IC 342 X-1

We observed the Ultraluminous X-ray Source IC 342 X-1 simultaneously in X-ray and radio with Chandra and the JVLA to investigate previously reported unresolved radio emission coincident with the ULX. The Chandra data reveal a spectrum that is much softer than observed previously and is well modelled by a thermal accretion disc spectrum. No significant radio emission above the rms noise level was observed within the region of the ULX, consistent with the interpretation as a thermal state though other states cannot be entirely ruled out with the current data. We estimate the mass of the black hole using the modelled inner disc temperature to be $30~\mathrm{M_{\odot}} \lesssim M\sqrt{\mathrm{cos}i}\lesssim200~\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ based on a Shakura-Sunyaev disc model. Through a study of the hardness and high-energy curvature of available X-ray observations, we find that the accretion state of X-1 is not determined by luminosity alone.

astro-ph.HE↗