|
| | | | |
| | | |
| Stat |
Members: 3645
Articles: 2'504'928
Articles rated: 2609
25 April 2024 |
|
| | | | |
|
Article overview
| |
|
|
X-Ray Flares and Oscillations from the Black Hole Candidate X-Ray Transient XTE J1650-500 at Low Luminosity | | John A. Tomsick
; Emrah Kalemci
; Stephane Corbel
; Philip Kaaret
; | | Date: |
11 Apr 2003 | | Journal: | Astrophys.J. 592 (2003) 1100-1109 | | Subject: | astro-ph | | Affiliation: | CASS/UCSD), Emrah Kalemci (SSL/UCB), Stephane Corbel (Universite Paris VII and CEA Saclay), Philip Kaaret (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA | | Abstract: | We report on X-ray observations made with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer of the black hole candidate (BHC) transient XTE J1650-500 at the end of its first, and currently only, outburst. By monitoring the source at low luminosities over several months, we found 6 bright ~100 second X-ray flares and long time scale oscillations of the X-ray flux. The oscillations are aperiodic with a characteristic time scale of 14.2 days and an order of magnitude variation in the 2.8-20 keV flux. The oscillations may be related to optical "mini-outbursts" that have been observed at the ends of outbursts for other short orbital period BHC transients. The X-ray flares have durations between 62 and 215 seconds and peak fluxes that are 5-24 times higher than the persistent flux. The flares have non-thermal energy spectra and occur when the persistent luminosity is near 3E34 (d/4 kpc)^2 erg/s (2.8-20 keV). The rise time for the brightest flare demonstrates that physical models for BHC systems must be able to account for the situation where the X-ray flux increases by a factor of up to 24 on a time scale of seconds. We discuss the flares in the context of observations and theory of Galactic BHCs and compare the flares to those detected from Sgr A*, the super-massive black hole at the Galactic center. We also compare the flares to X-ray bursts that are seen in neutron star systems. While some of the flare light curves are similar to those of neutron star bursts, the flares have non-thermal energy spectra in contrast to the blackbody spectra exhibited in bursts. This indicates that X-ray bursts should not be taken as evidence that a given system contains a neutron star unless the presence of a blackbody component in the burst spectrum can be demonstrated. | | Source: | arXiv, astro-ph/0304219 | | Services: | Forum | Review | PDF | Favorites | |
|
|
No review found.
Did you like this article?
Note: answers to reviews or questions about the article must be posted in the forum section.
Authors are not allowed to review their own article. They can use the forum section.
browser Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
|
| |
|
|
|
|
News, job offers and information for researchers and scientists:
| |
REGISTER