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Time Resolved Spectroscopy File Format

Here we describe the file formats for the time-resolved spectroscopy available for most bursts detected with RXTE/PCA and BeppoSAX/WFC

The analysis procedures are described in Galloway et al. (2020)

RXTE/PCA

For the PCA bursts, the files are provided with 18 columns, space-separated. The columns are

1. time (MET, s)
2. average count rate within the bin (not corrected for the number of PCUs operating)
3. estimated uncertainty on the count rate
4. time bin size (s)
5. neutral column density n_H for the spectral fit (1e22 cm^-2)
6. lower uncertainty on n_H (zero for fits in MINBAR DR1, as n_H is fixed)
7. upper uncertainty on n_H (ditto)
8. blackbody temperature kT (keV)
9. 1-sigma lower limit on kT
10. 1-sigma upper limit on kT
11. blackbody normalisation ((R_km/d_10kpc)²)
12. 1-sigma lower limit on blackbody normalisation
13. 1-sigma upper limit on blackbody normalisation
14. fit reduced chi²
15. "raw" flux value (2.5-25 keV, erg/cm²/s)
16. unabsorbed bolometric flux (1e-9 erg/cm²/s)
17. 1-sigma lower limit on bolometric flux
18. 1-sigma upper limit on bolometric flux

BeppoSAX/WFC

For the WFC bursts, steppar in XSpec is used to determine the minimum and maximum bolometric fluxes over all kT and blackbody normalisation values, with delta(chi²)<2.7. Then the flux solution is simply determined by (min+max)/2 and the error by (max-min)/2.

The files have 10 columns as follows:

1. MJD interval (formatted as F13:7-F13.7, e.g. 50286.2901948-50286.2902064)
2. blackbody temperature kT (keV)
3. 1-sigma error (symmetrical) on kT (keV)
4. blackbody normalisation (R_km/d_10kpc)
5. 1-sigma error (symmetrical) on blackbody normalisation
6. "raw" flux value (3-25 keV, erg/cm²/s)
7. 1-sigma error on "raw" flux
8. unabsorbed bolometric flux (erg/cm²/s)
9. 1-sigma error (symmetric) on bolometric flux, based on delta(chi2)=2.7 (erg/cm²/s)
10. fit reduced chi²