Accretion Disk Spectra of the Ultra-luminous X-ray Sources in Nearby Spiral Galaxies and Galactic Superluminal Jet Sources

Ultra-luminous Compact X-ray Sources (ULXs) in nearby spiral galaxies and Galactic superluminal jet sources share the common spectral characteristic that they have unusually high disk temperatures which cannot be explained in the framework of the standard optically thick accretion disk in the Schwarzschild metric. On the other hand, the standard accretion disk around the Kerr black hole might explain the observed high disk temperature, as the inner radius of the Kerr disk gets smaller and the disk temperature can be consequently higher. However, we point out that the observable Kerr disk spectra becomes significantly harder than Schwarzschild disk spectra only when the disk is highly inclined. This is because the emission from the innermost part of the accretion disk is Doppler-boosted for an edge-on Kerr disk, while hardly seen for a face-on disk. The Galactic superluminal jet sources are known to be highly inclined systems, thus their energy spectra may be explained with the standard Kerr disk with known black hole masses. For ULXs, on the other hand, the standard Kerr disk model seems implausible, since it is highly unlikely that their accretion disks are preferentially inclined, and, if edge-on Kerr disk model is applied, the black hole mass becomes unreasonably large (> 300 M_solar). Instead, the slim disk (advection dominated optically thick disk) model is likely to explain the observed super-Eddington luminosities, hard energy spectra, and spectral variations of ULXs. We suggest that ULXs are accreting black holes with a few tens of solar mass, which is not unexpected from the standard stellar evolution scenario, and that their X-ray emission is from the slim disk shining at super-Eddington luminosities.Comment: ApJ, accepte

Discovery of Spectral Transitions from Two Ultra-Luminous Compact X-Ray Sources in Ic342

Two {\it ASCA} observations were made of two ultra-luminous compact X-ray sources (ULXs), Source 1 and Source 2, in the spiral galaxy IC 342. In the 1993 observation, Source 2 showed a 0.5--10 keV luminosity of $6 \times 10^{39}$ ergs s$^{-1}$ (assuming a distance of 4.0 Mpc), and a hard power-law spectrum of photon index $\sim 1.4$. As already reported, Source 1 was $\sim 3$ times brighter on that occasion, and exhibited a soft spectrum represented by a multi-color disk model of inner-disk temperature $\sim 1.8$ keV. The second observation made in February 2000 revealed that Source 1 had made a transition into a hard spectral state, while Source 2 into a soft spectral state. The ULXs are therefore inferred to exhibit two distinct spectral states, and sometimes make transitions between them. These results significantly reinforce the scenario which describes ULXs as mass-accreting black holes.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures; acceoted for ApJ

Gauged Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with extra dimensions

We investigate phase structure of the D (> 4)-dimensional gauged Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model with $\delta(=D-4)$ extra dimensions compactified on TeV scale, based on the improved ladder Schwinger-Dyson (SD) equation in the bulk. We assume that the bulk running gauge coupling in the SD equation for the SU(N_c) gauge theory with N_f massless flavors is given by the truncated Kaluza-Klein effective theory and hence has a nontrivial ultraviolet fixed point (UVFP). We find the critical line in the parameter space of two couplings, the gauge coupling and the four-fermion coupling, which is similar to that of the gauged NJL model with fixed (walking) gauge coupling in four dimensions. It is shown that in the presence of such walking gauge interactions the four-fermion interactions become ``nontrivial'' even in higher dimensions, similarly to the four-dimensional gauged NJL model. Such a nontriviality holds only in the restricted region of the critical line (``nontrivial window'') with the gauge coupling larger than a non-vanishing value (``marginal triviality (MT)'' point), in contrast to the four-dimensional case where such a nontriviality holds for all regions of the critical line except for the pure NJL point. In the nontrivial window the renormalized effective potential yields a nontrivial interaction which is conformal invariant. The exisitence of the nontrivial window implies ``cutoff insensitivity'' of the physics prediction in spite of the ultraviolet dominance of the dynamics. In the formal limit D -> 4, the nontrivial window coincides with the known condition of the nontriviality of the four-dimensional gauged NJL model, $9/(2N_c) < N_f - N_c < 9/2 N_c$.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures, references added, to appear in Phys.Rev.D. The title is changed in PR

The Three Spectral Regimes Found in the Stellar Black Hole XTE J1550--564 in its High/Soft State

The present paper describes the analysis of multiple RXTE/PCA data of the black hole binary with superluminal jet, XTE J1550-564, acquired during its 1999--2000 outburst. The X-ray spectra show features typical of the high/soft spectral state, and can approximately be described by an optically thick disk spectrum plus a power-law tail. Three distinct spectral regimes, named standard regime, anomalous regime, and apparently standard regime, have been found from the entire set of the observed spectra. When the X-ray luminosity is well below 6E38 erg/s (assuming a distance of 5 kpc), XTE J1550-564 resides in the standard regime, where the soft spectral component dominates the power-law component and the observed disk inner radius is kept constant. When the luminosity exceeds the critical luminosity, the apparently standard regime is realized, where luminosity of the optically thick disk rises less steeply with the temperature, and the spectral shape is moderately distorted from that of the standard accretion disk. In this regime, radial temperature gradient of the disk has been found to be flatter than that of the standard accretion disk. The results of the apparently standard regime are suggestive of a slim disk (e.g., Abramowicz et al. 1988, Watarai et al. 2000) which is a solution predicted under high mass accretion rate. In the intermediate anomalous regime, the spectrum becomes much harder, and the disk inner radius derived using a simple disk model spectrum apparently varies significantly with time. These properties can be explained as a result of significant thermal inverse Comptonization of the disk photons, as was found from GRO J1655-40 in its anomalous regime by Kubota, Makishima and Ebisawa (2001).Comment: 29 pages, 10 figures; Resubmitted to ApJ by taking referee's comments into consideratio

Investigation of heaterless hollow cathode breakdown

The development of long life high powered (&gt;50A) hollow cathodes is of importance to meet the demand of increasingly powerful Gridded Ion engines and Hall Effect thrusters. High power cathodes typically operate at greater temperature ranges, which poses a significant challenge to maintain heater reliability. The heater component commonly used to raise the insert to emissive temperatures, has inherent reliability issues from thermal fatigue caused by thermal cycling with large temperature variations. A self-heating hollow cathode allows for potentially higher reliability through design simplicity of removing the heater component, and in addition there can be savings in mass, volume, ignition time and power. This study characterizes the initiation of the start-up process for a heaterless hollow cathode. As such the study analyses conditions of the initiation as a function of detailed geometrical and physical parameters. The Paschen curve can be seen to give a qualitative explanation for the breakdown voltage variance. The quantitative variations between the empirical results and Paschen curve are discussed in relation to non-uniform pressure simulations

Observational Evidence for Strong Disk Comptonization in GRO J1655-40

Analysis was made of the multiple XTE/PCA data on the promised black hole candidate with superluminal jet, GRO J1655-40, acquired during its 1996--1997 outburst. The X-ray spectra can be adequately described by the sum of an optically thick disk spectrum and a power-law. When the estimated 1--100 keV power-law luminosity exceeds 1E37 erg/s (assuming a distance of 3.2 kpc), the inner disk radius and the maximum color temperature derived from a simple accretion disk model (a multi-color disk model) vary significantly with time. These results reconfirm the previous report by Sobczak et al. (1999). In this strong power-law state (once called ``very high state''), the disk luminosity decreases with temperature, in contradiction to the prediction of the standard Shakura-Sunyaev model. In the same state, the intensity of the power-law component correlates negatively with that of the disk component, and positively with the power-law photon index, suggesting that the strong power-law is simply the missing optically thick disk emission. One possible explanation for this behavior is inverse-Compton scattering in the disk. By re-fitting the same data incorporating a disk Comptonization, the inner radius and temperature of the underlying disk are found to become more constant. These results provide one of the first observational confirmations of the scenario of disk Comptonization in the strong power-law state. This strong power-law state seems to appear when color temperature of the disk exceeds the certain threshold, 1.2 -- 1.3 keV.Comment: 10 pages 4 figures; submitted to ApJ

Relation between crystal and magnetic structures of the layered manganites La2-2xSr1+2xMn2O7 (0.30 =< x =< 0.50)

Comprehensive neutron-powder diffraction and Rietveld analyses were carried out to clarify the relation between the crystal and magnetic structures of La2-2xSr1+2xMn2O7 (0.30 =< x =< 0.50). The Jahn-Teller (JT) distortion of Mn-O6 octahedra, i.e., the ratio of the averaged apical Mn-O bond length to the equatorial Mn-O bond length, is Delta_JT=1.042(5) at x=0.30, where the magnetic easy-axis at low temperature is parallel to the c axis. As the JT distortion becomes suppressed with increasing x, a planar ferromagnetic structure appears at x =< 0.32, which is followed by a canted antiferromagnetic (AFM) structure at x =< 0.39. The canting angle between neighboring planes continuously increases from 0 deg (planar ferromagnet: 0.32 =< x < 0.39) to 180 deg (A-type AFM: x=0.48 where Delta_JT=1.013(5)). Dominance of the A-type AF structure with decrease of JT distortion can be ascribed to the change in the eg orbital state from d3z^2-r^2 to dx^2-y^2

Doping dependence of the exchange energies in bilayer manganites: Role of orbital degrees of freedom

Recently, an intriguing doping dependence of the exchange energies in the bilayer manganites $La_{2-2x}Sr_{1+2x}Mn_2O_7$ has been observed in the neutron scattering experiments. The intra-layer exchange only weakly changed with doping while the inter-layer one drastically decreased. Here we propose a theory which accounts for these experimental findings. We argue, that the observed striking doping dependence of the exchange energies can be attributed to the evaluation of the orbital level splitting with doping. The latter is handled by the interplay between Jahn-Teller effect (supporting an axial orbital) and the orbital anisotropy of the electronic band in the bilayer structure (promoting an in-plane orbital), which is monitored by the Coulomb repulsion. The presented theory, while being a mean-field type, describes well the experimental data and also gives the estimates of the several interesting energy scales involved in the problem.Comment: Added references, corrected typos. To appear in Phys. Rev.