The emission of Cygnus X-1: Observations with INTEGRAL SPI from 20 keV to 2 MeV

Abstract

We report on Cyg X-1 observations performed by the SPI telescope on board the INTEGRAL mission and distributed over more than 6 years. We investigate the variability of the intensity and spectral shape of this peculiar source in the hard X-ray domain, and more particularly up to the MeV region. We first study the total averaged spectrum which presents the best signal-to-noise ratio (4 Ms of data). Then, we refine our results by building mean spectra by periods and gathering those of similar hardness. Several spectral shapes are observed with important changes in the curvature between 20 and 200 keV, even at the same luminosity level. In all cases, the emission decreases sharply above 700 keV, with flux values above 1 MeV (or upper limits) well below the recently reported polarized flux, while compatible with the MeV emission detected some years ago by the Compton Gamma-ray Observatory/COMPTEL. Finally, we take advantage of the spectroscopic capability of the instrument to seek for spectral features in the 500 keV region with negative results for any significant annihilation emission on 2 ks and day timescales, as well as in the total data set.