The Mass of the Black Hole in Cygnus X-1

Abstract

Cygnus X-1 is a binary star system that is comprised of a black hole and a massive giant companion star in a tight orbit. Building on our accurate distance measurement reported in the preceding paper, we first determine the radius of the companion star, thereby constraining the scale of the binary system. To obtain a full dynamical model of the binary, we use an extensive collection of optical photometric and spectroscopic data taken from the literature. By using all of the available observational constraints, we show that the orbit is slightly eccentric (both the radial velocity and photometric data independently confirm this result) and that the companion star rotates roughly 1.4 times its pseudosynchronous value. We find a black hole mass of M = 14.8 ± 1.0 M ☉, a companion mass of M opt = 19.2 ± 1.9 M ☉, and the angle of inclination of the orbital plane to our line of sight of i = 27.1 ± 0.8 deg.