The mass, radius, distance and cooling of the neutron star in EXO 0748-676 in quiescence with XMM-Newton

We present the spectral analysis of four XMM-Newton observations of the neutron-star low-mass X-ray binary EXO 0748-676 in quiescence, taken between 2009 and 2013. We fit the spectra with an absorbed neutron-star atmosphere model, without the need for a high-energy (power-law) component, with a 95 per cent confidence upper limit of 1 per cent to the contribution of the power law to the total flux of the source in the 0.2-10.0 keV band. We find a significant emission line at around 0.5 keV in the spectra of the three CCD cameras on board XMM-Newton of all four observations; the line, which we tentatively identify as Lyα emission from NVII, is moderately broad, σ ≈ 0.17 keV, and contributes ˜10-14 per cent of the total flux in the 0.2-10 keV band. The temperature of the neutron star in EXO 0748-676 has decreased significantly compared to the previous XMM-Newton observation, with the cooling curve being consistent with either an exponential decay plus a constant, a power law or a broken power-law. We fitted the spectra with a neutron-star atmosphere model that takes into account the observed peak flux of photospheric radius expansion (PRE) bursts to constrain the neutron-star mass, radius and distance self-consistently. Using this model we carried out MCMC simulations assuming a uniform prior for the inclination angle of the system (which accounts for anisotropy in the emission at the peak of the bursts) and for the hydrogen fraction of the fuel during the PRE bursts. We find that M _{ns} = 1.87 ^{+0.69}_{-0.32} M⊙, R_{ns} = 8.5^{+3.2}_{-1.3} km and D = 5.4^{+2.4}_{-1.2} kpc (99% confidence level), which is inconsistent with quark-bearing equations of state for this neutron star.