XMM–Newton/Reflection Grating Spectrometer detection of the missing interstellar O vii Kα absorption line in the spectrum of Cyg X-2

Abstract

The hot interstellar medium is an important part of the Galactic ecosystem and can be effectively characterized through X-ray absorption line spectroscopy. However, in a study of the hot medium using the accreting neutron star X-ray binary, Cyg X-2, as a background light source, a mystery came about when the putatively strong O vii Kα line was not detected in Chandra grating observations, while other normally weaker lines such as O vii Kβ as well as O vi and O viii Kα are clearly present. We have investigated the grating spectra of Cyg X-2 from 10 XMM–Newton observations, in search of the missing line. We detect it consistently in nine of these observations, but the line is absent in the remaining one observation or is inconsistent with the detection in others at a ∼4σ confidence level. This absence of the line resembles that seen in the Chandra observations. Similarly, the O vi Kα line is found to disappear occasionally, but not in concert with the variation of the O vii Kα line. All these variations are most likely due to the presence of changing O vii and O vi Kα emission lines of Cyg X-2, which are blurred together with the absorption ones in the X-ray spectra. A re-examination of the Chandra grating data indeed shows evidence for a narrow emission line slightly off the O vi Kα absorption line. We further show that narrow N v emission lines with varying centroids and fluxes are present in far-ultraviolet spectra from the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. These results provide new constraints on the accretion around the neutron star and on the X-ray-heating of the stellar companion. The understanding of these physical processes is also important to the fidelity of using such local X-ray binaries for interstellar absorption line spectroscopy.