SYSTEMATIC UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SPECTROSCOPIC MEASUREMENTS OF NEUTRON STAR MASSES AND RADII FROM THERMONUCLEAR X-RAY BURSTS. III. ABSOLUTE FLUX CALIBRATION

• Main Authors: Güver, Tolga, Özel, Feryal, Marshall, Herman, Psaltis, Dimitrios, Guainazzi, Matteo, Díaz-Trigo, Maria
• Other Authors: Univ Arizona, Dept Astron
• Language: en
• Published: IOP PUBLISHING LTD 2016
• Subjects: stars: neutron; X-rays: bursts
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/621974; http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/621974

Many techniques for measuring neutron star radii rely on absolute flux measurements in the X-rays. As a result, one of the fundamental uncertainties in these spectroscopic measurements arises from the absolute flux calibrations of the detectors being used. Using the stable X-ray burster, GS 1826-238, and its simultaneous observations by Chandra HETG/ACIS-S and RXTE/PCA as well as by XMM-Newton EPIC-pn and RXTE/PCA, we quantify the degree of uncertainty in the flux calibration by assessing the differences between the measured fluxes during bursts. We find that the RXTE/PCA and the Chandra gratings measurements agree with each other within their formal uncertainties, increasing our confidence in these flux measurements. In contrast, XMM-Newton EPIC-pn measures 14.0 +/- 0.3% less flux than the RXTE/PCA. This is consistent with the previously reported discrepancy with the flux measurements of EPIC-pn, compared with EPIC MOS1, MOS2, and ACIS-S detectors. We also show that any intrinsic time-dependent systematic uncertainty that may exist in the calibration of the satellites has already been implicity taken into account in the neutron star radius measurements.