http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.05005
Type I X-ray bursts are thermonuclear flashes observed from the surface of accreting neutron stars in Low Mass X-ray Binaries. Oscillations have been observed during the rise and/or decay of some of these X-ray bursts. Those seen during the rise can be well explained by a spreading hot spot model, but to date there haven’t been any quantitative studies that consistently track the oscillation amplitude both during the rise and decay (tail) of bursts. Here we compute the light curves and amplitudes of oscillations in X-ray burst models that realistically account for both flame spreading and subsequent cooling. We present results for two such “cooling wake” models, a “canonical” cooling model where each patch on the neutron star surface heats and cools identically, and an “asymmetric” model where parts of the star cool at different rates. We show that while canonical cooling models can generate oscillations in the tails of bursts, they cannot easily produce the highest observed modulation amplitudes. Alternatively, a simple model with asymmetric cooling can achieve higher amplitudes consistent with the observations.
S. Mahmoodifar and T. Strohmayer
Tue, 20 Oct 15
44/92
Comments: 6 pages, 4 figures, submitted for publication in ApJ Letters
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