Revealing the nature of the transient source MAXI J0637-430 through spectro-temporal analysis
Abstract We study the spectral and temporal properties of MAXI J0637-430 during its 2019-2020 outburst using NICER, AstroSat and Swift-XRT data. The source was in a disc dominant state within a day of its detection and traces out a ‘c’ shaped profile in the HID, similar to the ‘mini’-outbursts of the recurrent BHB 4U 1630-472. Energy spectrum is obtained in the 0.5 − 10 keV band with NICER and Swift-XRT, and 0.5 − 25 keV with AstroSat. The spectra can be modelled using a multicolour disc emission (diskbb) convolved with a thermal Comptonisation component (thcomp). The disc temperature decreases from 0.6 keV to 0.1 keV during the decay with a corresponding decrease in photon index (Γ) from 4.6 to 1.8. The fraction of Compton scattered photons (fcov) remains < 0.3 during the decay upto mid-January 2020 and gradually increases to 1 as the source reaches hard state. Power Density Spectra (PDS) generated in the 0.01-100 Hz range display no Quasi-periodic Oscillations (QPOs) although band-limited noise (BLN) is seen towards the end of January 2020. During AstroSat observations, Γ lies in the range 2.3 − 2.6 and rms increases from 11 to 20%, suggesting that the source was in an intermediate state till 21 November 2019. Spectral fitting with the relativistic disc model (kerrbb), in conjunction with the soft-hard transition luminosity, favour a black hole with mass 3 − 19 M⊙ with retrograde spin at a distance <15 kpc. Finally, we discuss the possible implications of our findings.