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PhD Thesis (PDF) - Department of Astronomy - University of Virginia

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5.8 Hardness Ratios<br />

The spectral properties <strong>of</strong> sources can be crudely characterized by hardness ratios<br />

or X-ray colors (e.g., Paper I; Paper II). We defined hardness ratios <strong>of</strong> H21 ≡ (M −<br />

S)/(M + S), H31 ≡ (H − S)/(H + S), and H32 ≡ (H − M)/(H + M), where S,<br />

M, and H are the total counts in the s<strong>of</strong>t (0.3–1 keV), medium (1–2 keV), and<br />

hard (2–6 keV) bands (Sivak<strong>of</strong>f et al. 2004). Hardness ratios without superscripts<br />

are the measured values; we use the superscript 0 to indicate the intrinsic hardness<br />

ratios, correcting for Galactic absorption and QE degradation in the Chandra ACIS<br />

detectors. The counts in each band are corrected assuming the best-fit Chandra X-ray<br />

spectrum <strong>of</strong> the inner resolved sources (a < aeff: Table 5.5, row 3). Since the different<br />

observations had different QE degradations, we adopted the following technique for<br />

correcting the observed counts in a band. Let Ni,j,k be the net counts for source<br />

i in band j during observation k, and let Cj,k be the absorption and degradation<br />

correction to counts for observation k in band j. (The QE degradation was assumed<br />

to be independent <strong>of</strong> position on the detector and thus the same for all sources within<br />

a given observation.) The combined correction for source i in band j is given by<br />

〈Ci,j〉 ≡ <br />

(Cj,kNi,j,k)/ <br />

Ni,j,k, where the sums are only performed over observations<br />

k<br />

k<br />

where Ni,j,k > 0. We require that Ni,j,k > 0 because there is no correction to the source<br />

hardness when a source is not emitting at a detectable level. Having determined the<br />

appropriate correction, the corrected number <strong>of</strong> counts for source i in band j is N 0 i,j =<br />

〈Ci,j〉 <br />

k<br />

Ni,j,k, where the sum is now over all observations. The corrected band counts<br />

are then used to calculate the corrected hardness ratios. We also combined Monte<br />

Carlo simulations <strong>of</strong> the observed counts in the source and background apertures<br />

with the count corrections to calculate the 1σ confidence intervals for the hardness<br />

ratios. (When no counts are observed, we set the expected number <strong>of</strong> counts in the<br />

186

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