Nonthermal Hard X‐Ray Emission and Iron Kα Emission from a Superflare on II Pegasi

Abstract

We report on an X-ray flare detected on the active binary system II Pegasi with the Swift telescope. The event triggered the Burst Alert Telescope in the hard X-ray band on December 16, 2005 at 11:21:52 UT with a 10-200 keV luminosity of 2.2×10 32 erg s −1 — a superflare, by comparison with energies of typical stellar flares on active binary systems. The trigger spectrum indicates a hot thermal plasma with T∼180 ×10 6 K. X-ray spectral analysis from 0.8–200 keV with the X-Ray Telescope and BAT in the next two orbits reveals evidence for a thermal component (T>80 ×10 6 K) and Fe K 6.4 keV emission. A tail of emission out to 200 keV can be fit with either an extremely high temperature thermal plasma (T∼3×10 8 K) or power-law emission. Based on analogies with solar flares, we attribute the excess continuum emission to nonthermal thicktarget bremsstrahlung emission from a population of accelerated electrons. We estimate the radiated energy from 0.01–200 keV to be ∼6×10 36 erg, the total radiated energy over all wavelengths ∼10 38 erg, the energy in nonthermal electrons 1