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A Thermal-Nonthermal Inverse Compton Model for Cyg X-1

A. Crider, E. P. Liang, I. A. Smith, D. Lin, M. Kusunose

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/9707006

Abstract

Using Monte Carlo methods to simulate the inverse Compton scattering of soft photons, we model the spectrum of the Galactic black hole candidate Cyg X-1, which shows evidence of a nonthermal tail extending beyond a few hundred keV. We assume an ad hoc sphere of leptons, whose energy distribution consists of a Maxwellian plus a high energy power-law tail, and inject 0.5 keV blackbody photons. The spectral data is used to constrain the nonthermal plasma fraction and the power-law index assuming a reasonable Maxwellian temperature and Thomson depth. A small but non-negligible fraction of nonthermal leptons is needed to explain the power-law tail.

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