Bibcode
Linares, Manuel; Chakrabarty, D.; van der Klis, M.
Bibliographical reference
American Astronomical Society, HEAD meeting #12, #44.07
Advertised on:
9
2011
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
The neutron star transient and 11 Hz X-ray pulsar IGR J17480-2446,
recently discovered in the globular cluster Terzan 5, showed
unprecedented bursting activity during its 2010 October-November
outburst. We analyzed all X-ray bursts detected with the Rossi X-ray
Timing Explorer and confirmed their thermonuclear origin, despite the
fact that many do not show the canonical spectral softening along the
decay. The burst energy, peak luminosity and daily-averaged spectral
profiles all evolve smoothly throughout the outburst, in parallel with
the persistent (non-burst) luminosity. We also find that the peak burst
to persistent luminosity ratio determines whether or not cooling is
present in the bursts from IGR J17480-2446, and we compare these
findings with X-ray bursts from other rapidly accreting neutron stars.
We conclude that the detection of cooling along the decay is a
sufficient, but not a necessary condition to identify an X-ray burst as
thermonuclear. We also discovered milli-hertz quasi-periodic
oscillations near the outburst peak, which smoothly evolve into a rapid
series of faint bursts as mass accretion rate decreases. Finally, we
explore the influence of spin and magnetic field on the unique bursting
properties from IGR J17480-2446.