Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

Feedback of type-I bursts to the accretion process in X-ray binaries

Long Ji
Shu Zhang, YuPeng Chen, Shuang-Nan Zhang, Peter Kretschmar, Jian-Min Wang, Jian Li, Masha Chernyakova, Jian-Min Wang

Abstract:

Type-I X-ray bursts are thermonuclear explosions on the surface of neutron star. Intense soft X-ray emissions are observed during type-I X-ray bursts. The soft seed photons from the bursts will lead to the cooling of corona. Up to date, the hard X-ray shortage and fast recovery during the evolution of bursts are discovered in 6 sources, which will shed lights on the position and origin of the corona. Type-I X-ray bursts embraced in the banana state of an outburst tend to deviate from a blackbody spectrum, which hints for a temporarily increased and decreased accretion rate in the accretion disk during type-I X-ray bursts. These results could be consistently explained by the feedback of type-I X-ray bursts to theaccretion process.