Spectro-polarimetry of 4U 1957+115 with IXPE: Effects of spin and returning radiation on polarised emission of black hole in thermal state

Abstract

We present a comprehensive spectro-polarimetric study of persistent Black hole X-ray binary 4U $1957\!+\!115$ with {\it IXPE} and {\it NICER} observations. The source is observed in disk dominated thermal state with disk temperature, kT$_{in}\approx1.4$ keV. The emission during thermal state from the source is found to be moderately polarized and \textit{IXPE} measures a degree of polarization (PD) $= 1.95\pm0.37\%$ ($>4.79\sigma$) along with a polarization angle (PA) $= -42.78^{\circ}\pm5.41^{\circ}$ in the energy range of $2-8$ keV. PD is found to be an increasing function of energy, whereas PA indicates switching within the energy range which could be due to high inclination and the returning radiation within the system. Simultaneous energy spectra ($0.6-10$ keV) from {\it NICER} are modelled to study the spectral properties. Furthermore, the spin parameter of the black hole is estimated with spectro-polarimetric data as a$_{\ast}=0.988\pm0.001\,(1\sigma)$, which is corroborated by {\it NICER} observations. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings.