A re--analysis of the iron line in the XMM-Newton data from the low/hard state in GX339--4

Chris Done, Maria Diaz Trigo

Published 2009-11-17, updated 2010-06-14Version 2

The detection of an extremely broad iron line in XMM-Newton MOS data from the low/hard state of the black hole binary GX339-4 is the only piece of evidence which unambiguously conflicts with the otherwise extremely successful truncated disc interpretation of this state. However, it also conflicts with some aspect of observational data for all other alternative geometries of the low/hard state, including jet models, making it very difficult to understand. We re-analyse these data and show that they are strongly affected by pileup even with extensive centroid removal as the source is ~200x brighter than the recommended maximum countrate. Instead, we extract the simultaneous PN timing mode data which should not be affected by pileup. These show a line which is significantly narrower than in the MOS data. Thus these data are easily consistent with a truncated disc, and indeed, strongly support such an interpretation.