Thermonuclear burst oscillations (TBOs) with RXTE Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Bilous A.V.
  2. Watts A.L.
  3. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

We describe a blind uniform search for thermonuclear burst oscillations (TBOs) in the majority of Type I bursts observed by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) (2118 bursts from 57 neutron stars). We examined 2-2002Hz power spectra from the Fourier transform in sliding 0.5-2s windows, using fine-binned light curves in the 2-60keV energy range. The significance of the oscillation candidates was assessed by simulations which took into account light-curve variations, dead time, and the sliding time windows. Some of our sources exhibited multi-frequency variability at <~15Hz that cannot be readily removed with light-curve modeling and may have an astrophysical (non-TBO) nature. Overall, we found that the number and strength of potential candidates depends strongly on the parameters of the search. We found candidates from all previously known RXTE TBO sources, with pulsations that had been detected at similar frequencies in multiple independent time windows, and discovered TBOs from SAXJ1810.8-2658. We could not confirm most previously reported tentative TBO detections or identify any obvious candidates just below the detection threshold at similar frequencies in multiple bursts. We computed fractional amplitudes of all TBO candidates and placed upper limits on non-detections. Finally, for a few sources we noted a small excess of candidates with powers comparable to fainter TBOs, but appearing in single independent time windows at random frequencies. At least some of these candidates may be noise spikes that appear interesting due to selection effects. The potential presence of such candidates calls for extra caution if claiming single-window TBO detections.

Keywords
  1. x-ray-binary-stars
  2. x-ray-sources
  3. neutron-stars
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2019ApJS..245...19B
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJS/245/19
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/245/19
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.22450019

Access

Web browser access HTML
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJS/245/19
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJS/245/19
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJS/245/19
IVOA Table Access TAP
http://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tap
Run SQL-like queries with TAP-enabled clients (e.g., TOPCAT).
IVOA Cone Search SCS
For use with a cone search client (e.g., TOPCAT).
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/245/19/sources?
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/245/19/sources?
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/245/19/sources?

History

2020-06-04T15:21:07Z
Resource record created
2020-06-04T15:21:07Z
Created
2020-09-01T07:16:21Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr