What ignites on the neutron star of 4U 0614+091?
Erik Kuulkers,J. J. M. in 't Zand,Jean-Luc Atteia,Alan M. Levine,Søren Brandt,D. A. Smith,Manuel Linares,Maurizio Falanga,C. Sanchez-Fernandez,C. B. Markwardt,Tod E. Strohmayer,Andrew Cumming,Motoko Suzuki +12 more
TLDR
In this article, the authors describe the burst properties in relation to the persistent emission of the low-mass X-ray binary 4U 0614+091 and find bursts with a wide variety of characteristics in serendipitous wide-field X-r ay observations by the WATCH on EURECA, the ASM on RXTE, the WFCs on BeppoSAX, the FREGATE on HETE-2, the IBIS/ISGRI on INTEGRAL, and the BAT on Swift, as well as pointed observations with theAbstract:
The low-mass X-ray binary 4U 0614+091 is a source of sporadic thermonuclear (type I) X-ray burs ts. We find bursts with a wide variety of characteristics in serendipitous wide-field X-r ay observations by the WATCH on EURECA, the ASM on RXTE, the WFCs on BeppoSAX, the FREGATE on HETE-2, the IBIS/ISGRI on INTEGRAL, and the BAT on Swift, as well as pointed observations with the PCA and HEXTE on RXTE. Most of the bursts are bright, i.e., they reach a peak flux of a bout 15 Crab, but a few are weak and only reach a peak flux below a Crab. One of the bursts shows a ver y strong photospheric radius-expansion phase. This allows us to evaluate the distance to the source, which we estimate to be 3.2 kpc. The burst durations vary generally from about 10 sec t o 5 min. However, after one of the intermediate-duration bursts, a f aint tail is seen to at least about 2.4 hours after the start of the burst. One very long burst was observed, which lasted for several hours . This superburst candidate was followed by a normal type-I burst only 19 days later. This is, to our knowledge, the shortest burst- quench time among the superbursters. The observation of a superburst in this system is diffi cult to reconcile if the system is accreting at about 1% of the Eddington limit. We describe the burst properties in relation to the persistent emission. No strong correlation s are apparent, except that the intermediate-duration burs ts occurred when 4U 0614+091’s persistent emission was lowest and calm, and when burs ts were infrequent (on average roughly one every month to 3 months). The average burst rate increased significantly af ter this period. The maximum average burst recurrence rate i s about once every week to 2 weeks. The burst behaviour may be partly understood if there is at least an appreciable amount of helium pre sent in the accreted material from the donor star. If the system is an ultra-compact X-ray binary with a CO white-dwarf donor, as has been suggested, this is unexpected. If the bursts are powered by h elium, we find that the energy production per accumulated mas s is about 2.5 times less than expected for pure helium matter.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Thermonuclear Burst Oscillations
TL;DR: A comprehensive review of the observational properties of burst oscillations, an assessment of the status of the theoretical models that are being developed to explain them, and an overview of how they can be used can be found in this article.
Journal ArticleDOI
Jet spectral breaks in black hole X-ray binaries
David M. Russell,David M. Russell,David M. Russell,Sera Markoff,Piergiorgio Casella,Andrew G. Cantrell,Ritaban Chatterjee,Rob Fender,Elena Gallo,P. Gandhi,Jeroen Homan,Dipankar Maitra,James Miller-Jones,Kieran O'Brien,T. Shahbaz,T. Shahbaz +15 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors collected a wealth of multi-wavelength data from the outbursts of BHXBs during hard X-ray states, in order to search for jet breaks as yet unidentified in their spectral energy distributions.
Journal ArticleDOI
A systematic analysis of the broad Fe Kalpha line in neutron star LMXBs with XMM-Newton
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed the XMM-Newton archival observations of 16 neutron star (NS) low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) to study the Fe K emission in these objects.
Journal ArticleDOI
MAXI J1659-152: the shortest orbital period black-hole transient in outburst
Erik Kuulkers,Chryssa Kouveliotou,Tomaso Belloni,M. Cadolle Bel,Jérôme Chenevez,M. Diaz Trigo,Jeroen Homan,A. Ibarra,J. A. Kennea,T. Muñoz-Darias,T. Muñoz-Darias,Jan-Uwe Ness,Arvind Parmar,A. M. T. Pollock,E.P.J. van den Heuvel,A. J. van der Horst,A. J. van der Horst +16 more
TL;DR: MAXI J1659−152 is a bright X-ray transient black-hole candidate binary system discovered in September 2010 as mentioned in this paper, and it has a spectral behavior opposite to that of the absorption dips, and are related to fast spectral state changes (hence referred to as transition dips).
Journal ArticleDOI
A systematic analysis of the broad iron Kα line in neutron-star LMXBs with XMM-Newton
Abstract: We analysed the XMM-Newton archival observations of 16 neutron star (NS), low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) to study the Fe K emission in these objects. The sample includes all the observations of NS LMXBs performed in EPIC pn timing mode with XMM-Newton publicly available until September 30, 2009. We performed a detailed data analysis considering pile-up and background effects. The properties of the Fe lines differed from previous published analyses because of either incorrect pile-up corrections or different continuum parameterisation. Eighty percent of the observations for which a spectrum can be extracted showed significant Fe line emission. We found an average line centroid of 6.67 ± 0.02 keV and a finite width, σ , of 0.33 ± 0.02 keV. The equivalent width of the lines varied between 17 and 189 eV, with an average weighted value of 42 ± 3 eV. For sources where several observations were available, the Fe line parameters changed between observations whenever the continuum changed significantly. The line parameters did not show any correlation with luminosity. Most important, we could fit the Fe line with a simple Gaussian component for all the sources. The lines did not show the asymmetric profiles that were interpreted as indicating relativistic effects in previous analyses of these LMXBs.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission
Neil Gehrels,G. Chincarini,G. Chincarini,Paolo Giommi,Keith O. Mason,John A. Nousek,Alan A. Wells,Nicholas E. White,S. D. Barthelmy,David N. Burrows,L. R. Cominsky,Kevin Hurley,F. E. Marshall,Peter Mészáros,Peter W. A. Roming,Lorella Angelini,Lorella Angelini,L. M. Barbier,Tomaso Belloni,Sergio Campana,P. A. Caraveo,M. M. Chester,O. Citterio,T. L. Cline,Mark Cropper,Jay Cummings,Jay Cummings,A. J. Dean,Eric D. Feigelson,E. E. Fenimore,Dale A. Frail,A. S. Fruchter,Gordon P. Garmire,Keith C. Gendreau,Gabriele Ghisellini,Jochen Greiner,Joanne E. Hill,S. D. Hunsberger,Hans A. Krimm,Hans A. Krimm,Shrinivas R. Kulkarni,Pawan Kumar,F. Lebrun,Nicole M. Lloyd-Ronning,Craig B. Markwardt,Craig B. Markwardt,Barbara J. Mattson,Barbara J. Mattson,Richard Mushotzky,Jay P. Norris,J. P. Osborne,Bohdan Paczynski,David Palmer,H.-S. Park,A. M. Parsons,J. A. Paul,Martin J. Rees,Christopher S. Reynolds,James E. Rhoads,T. P. Sasseen,Bradley E. Schaefer,A. Short,Alan P. Smale,Alan P. Smale,Ian Smith,Luigi Stella,Gianpiero Tagliaferri,Tadayuki Takahashi,Makoto Tashiro,Leisa K. Townsley,Jack Tueller,Martin J. L. Turner,M. Vietri,Wolfgang Voges,Martin Ward,Richard Willingale,F. M. Zerbi,W. W. Zhang +77 more
TL;DR: The Swift mission as discussed by the authors is a multi-wavelength observatory for gamma-ray burst (GRB) astronomy, which is a first-of-its-kind autonomous rapid-slewing satellite for transient astronomy and pioneers the way for future rapid-reaction and multiwavelength missions.
Journal ArticleDOI
On the Absorption of X‐Rays in the Interstellar Medium
J. Wilms,A. Allen,Richard McCray +2 more
TL;DR: In this paper, an improved model for the absorption of X-rays in the interstellar medium (ISM) is presented for use with data from future X-ray missions with larger effective areas and increased energy resolution such as Chandra and the X-Ray Multiple Mirror mission.
Book
Compact Stellar X-ray Sources
TL;DR: A decade of X-ray sources and their evolution is described in this paper, with a focus on the formation and evolution of super-soft sources and the formation of compact stellar sources.
Journal ArticleDOI
Atomic data for astrophysics. II. New analytic fits for photoionization cross sections of atoms and ions
TL;DR: In this article, a complete set of analytic fits to the nonrelativistic photoionization cross sections for the ground states of atoms and ions of elements from H through Si, and S, Ar, Ca, and Fe were presented.
Journal ArticleDOI
The INTEGRAL mission
Christoph Winkler,Thierry J.-L. Courvoisier,G. Di Cocco,Neil Gehrels,A. Giménez,A. Giménez,S. A. Grebenev,W. Hermsen,J. M. Mas-Hesse,J. M. Mas-Hesse,Francois Lebrun,Niels Lund,Giorgio G. C. Palumbo,J. A. Paul,J. P. Roques,Herbert W. Schnopper,V. Schönfelder,R. A. Sunyaev,Bonnard J. Teegarden,P. Ubertini,G. Vedrenne,A. J. Dean +21 more
TL;DR: The International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) as mentioned in this paper is dedicated to the fine spectroscopy (2.5 × 1.5 ) and fine imaging (angular resolution: 12 arcmin FWHM) of celestial gamma-ray sources in the energy range 15 −keV to 10 −MeV with concurrent source monitoring in the X −ray and optical (V −band, 550 −nm) energy ranges.