AN EMPIRICAL METHOD FOR IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF RXTE PCA SPECTRA
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Garcia-2014-AN EMPIRICAL METHOD.pdf
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Author(s)
McClintock, Jeffrey E.
Steiner, James F.
Grinberg, Victoria
Garcia, Javier A.
Remillard, Ronald A
Date Issued
September 2014
Journal
The Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Garcia, Javier A. et al. “AN EMPIRICAL METHOD FOR IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF RXTE PCA SPECTRA.” The Astrophysical Journal 794.1 (2014): 73. © 2014 The American Astronomical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We fitted all of the several hundred RXTE PCA spectra of the Crab individually to a simple power-law model; the total number of counts in the composite spectrum is >10[superscript 9]. We then used the spectrum of residuals to derive a calibration tool, called pcacorr, that we apply to large samples of spectra for GX 339-4, H1743-322, and XTE J1550-564. Application of the tool improved the quality of all the fits, and the improvement is dramatic for spectra with [> over ~] 10[superscript 7] counts. The Crab residual spectrum is somewhat different for each of the five Proportional Counter Array (PCA) detectors, but it was relatively stable over the course of the mission. We recommend that pcacorr be routinely applied to spectra with [> over ~] 10[superscript 6] counts and that one include a systematic error of 0.1%, rather than the 0.5-1% value that has customarily been used. We expect that application of the tool will result in an increase in sensitivity of the PCA to faint spectral features by up to an order of magnitude.
MIT Department
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x/794/1/73
