NICER Observation of Unusual Burst Oscillations in 4U 1728-34

© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer has observed seven thermonuclear X-ray bursts from the low-mass X-ray binary neutron star 4U 1728-34 from the start of the mission's operations until 2019 February. Three of these burs...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mahmoodifar, Simin, Strohmayer, Tod E, Bult, Peter, Altamirano, Diego, Arzoumanian, Zaven, Chakrabarty, Deepto, Gendreau, Keith C, Guillot, Sebastien, Homan, Jeroen, Jaisawal, Gaurava K, Keek, Laurens, Wolff, Michael T
Other Authors: MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Astronomical Society 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/134817
Description
Summary:© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer has observed seven thermonuclear X-ray bursts from the low-mass X-ray binary neutron star 4U 1728-34 from the start of the mission's operations until 2019 February. Three of these bursts show oscillations in their decaying tail, with frequencies that are within 1 Hz of the previously detected burst oscillations from this source. Two of these burst oscillations have unusual properties: they have large fractional root mean square (rms) amplitudes of 48% ± 9% and 46% ± 9%, and they are detected only at photon energies above 6 keV. By contrast, the third detected burst oscillation is compatible with previous observations of this source, with a fractional rms amplitude of 7.7% ± 1.5% rms in the 0.3 to 6.2 keV energy band. We discuss the implications of these large-amplitude burst oscillations, finding that they are difficult to explain with the current theoretical models for X-ray burst tail oscillations.