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N. Kawanaka

Publications and source records attributed to N. Kawanaka.

21 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

CALET Upper Limits on X-ray and Gamma-ray Counterparts of GW 151226

We present upper limits in the hard X-ray and gamma-ray bands at the time of the LIGO gravitational-wave event GW 151226 derived from the CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) observation. The main instrument of CALET, CALorimeter (CAL), observes gamma-rays from ~1 GeV up to 10 TeV with a field of view of ~2 sr. The CALET gamma-ray burst monitor (CGBM) views ~3 sr and ~2pi sr of the sky in the 7 keV - 1 MeV and the 40 keV - 20 MeV bands, respectively, by using two different scintillator-based instruments. The CGBM covered 32.5% and 49.1% of the GW 151226 sky localization probability in the 7 keV - 1 MeV and 40 keV - 20 MeV bands respectively. We place a 90% upper limit of 2 x 10^{-7} erg cm-2 s-1 in the 1 - 100 GeV band where CAL reaches 15% of the integrated LIGO probability (~1.1 sr). The CGBM 7 sigma upper limits are 1.0 x 10^{-6} erg cm-2 s-1 (7-500 keV) and 1.8 x 10^{-6} erg cm-2 s-1 (50-1000 keV) for one second exposure. Those upper limits correspond to the luminosity of 3-5 x 10^{49} erg s-1 which is significantly lower than typical short GRBs.

astro-ph.HE↗

Coronal Neutrino Emission in Hypercritical Accretion Flows

Hypercritical accretion flows onto stellar mass black holes (BHs) are commonly considered as a promising model of central engines of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). In this model a certain fraction of gravitational binding energy of accreting matter is deposited to the energy of relativistic jets via neutrino annihilation and/or magnetic fields. However, some recent studies have indicated that the energy deposition rate by neutrino annihilation is somewhat smaller than that needed to power a GRB. To overcome this difficulty, Ramirez-Ruiz & Socrates (2005) proposed that high energy neutrinos from hot corona above the accretion disk might enhance the efficiency of energy deposition. We elucidate the disk corona model in the context of hypercritical accretion flows. From the energy balance in the disk and the corona, we can calculate the disk and coronal temperature, Td and Tc, and neutrino spectra, taking into account the neutrino cooling processes by neutrino-electron scatterings and neutrino pair productions. The calculated neutrino spectra consist of two peaks; one by the neutrino emission from the disk and the other by that from the corona. We find that the disk corona can enhance the efficiency of energy release but only by a factor of 1.5 or so, unless the height of the corona is very small, H<<r. This is because the neutrino emission is very sensitive to the temperature of emitting region, and then the ratio Tc/Td cannot be so large.

astro-ph↗

Iron Fluorescent Line Emission from Black Hole Accretion Disks with Magnetic Reconnection-Heated Corona

We investigate the iron K$α$ fluorescent line produced by hard X-ray photons from magnetic reconnection-heated corona. The hot corona with temperature being about $10^9$K can irradiate the underlying disk with a continuum X-ray spectrum produced via thermal Comptonization. Then the iron atoms in the disk photoelectrically absorb X-ray photons and radiate K$α$ line photons. Therefore, the activity of corona is responsible to the iron line emission from the underlying disk. In previous studies, oversimplified X-ray photon sources are often assumed above the disk in order to compute the iron line profile or power-law line emissivity profiles are assumed with an index being a free parameter. We adopt the more realistic corona model constructed by Liu et al. in which the corona is heated by magnetic energy released through the reconnection of magnetic flux loops and which has no free parameter. Then the accretion energy is dominantly dissipated in the corona, in which X-ray photons are efficiently produced and irradiate the underlying disk. We find the local emmisivity of iron line on the disk is approximated as $F_{{\rm K}α}(r)\propto r^{-5}$. The iron line profiles derived from this model give excellent fits to the observational data of MCG-6-30-15 with the profiles derived theoretically for $i\sim 30^{\circ}$ for energy band 4-7keV. Possible origins of line variability are briefly discussed.

astro-ph↗