The 2010 outburst of the transient neutron star low-mass X-ray binary IGR J17480-2446 has exhibited a series of unique X-ray bursts, as well as millihertz (mHz) quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) related to these bursts. It has been recently proposed that these are type-II bursts, powered by the gravitational energy. This implies that the current nuclear-burning based model of mHz QPOs is not correct, and this timing feature cannot be used as a tool to measure the neutron star parameters. We report the analysis of the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer data of IGR J17480-2446 to show that the burst properties of this source are quite different from the properties of the type-II bursts observed from the rapid burster and GRO J1744-28. For example, the inferred ratio (~ 50-90) of the non-burst fluence to burst fluence is consistent with the thermonuclear origin of IGR J17480-2446 bursts, and is significantly different from this ratio (< 4) for type-II bursts. Our results suggest that the bursts and the mHz QPOs from IGR J17480-2446 are powered by the nuclear energy.
@article{arxiv.1101.0181,
title = {X-ray bursts from the Terzan 5 transient IGR J17480-2446: nuclear rather than gravitational},
author = {Manoneeta Chakraborty and Sudip Bhattacharyya},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1101.0181},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
six pages, 1 table, 2 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters