Implications on accretion flow dynamics from spectral study of Swift~J1357.2-0933

Abstract

We report a detailed spectral study of Swift~J1357.2-0933 low-mass X-ray binary during its 2017 outburst using {\it Swift} and {\it NuSTAR} observations. We fit the data with two component advective flow (TCAF) model and power-law model. We observe that the source is in hard state during the outburst, where the size of the Compton cloud changes significantly with disc accretion rate. The typical disc accretion rate for this source is $\sim 1.5-2.0~\%$ of the Eddington accretion rate $(\dot M_{Edd})$. The model fitted intermediate shock compression ratio gives an indication of the presence of jet, which is reported in the literature in different energy bands. We also split NuSTAR data into three equal segments and fit with the model. We check spectral stability using color-color diagram and accretion rate ratio (ARR) vs. intensity diagram using different segments of the light curve but do not find any significant variation in the hardness ratio or in the accretion rate ratio. To estimate the mass of the candidate, we use an important characteristics of TCAF that the the model normalization always remains a constant. We found that the mass comes out to be in the range of $4.0-6.8~M_\odot$. From the model fitted results, we study the disc geometry and different physical parameters of the flow in each observation. The count rate of the source appears to decay in a time scale of $\sim 45 day$.