Related papers: Latitudinal Shear Instabilities during Type I X-ra…
We present an analysis of the nine type I X-ray bursts that were observed from KS 1731-260 with RXTE. We find that the bursts divide naturally into two populations: ``fast bursts'' occur on the Banana Branch when the accretion rate is high…
Precision measurements of neutron star radii can provide a powerful probe of the properties of cold matter beyond nuclear density. Beginning in the late 1970s it was proposed that the radius could be obtained from the apparent or inferred…
We report on millisecond variability from the X-ray transient XTE J1739-285. We detected six X-ray type I bursts and found evidence for oscillations at 1122 +/- 0.3 Hz in the brightest X-ray burst. Taking into consideration the power in the…
Very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs can undergo pulsational instability excited by central deuterium burning during the initial phases of their evolution. We present the results of evolutionary and nonadiabatic linear stability models that…
We measured the thermonuclear burning efficiency as a function of accretion rate for the Type I X-ray bursts of five low-mass X-ray binary systems. We chose sources with measured neutron star spins and a substantial population of bursts…
We investigate the nature of low T/W dynamical instabilities in differentially rotating stars by means of linear perturbation. Here, T and W represent rotational kinetic energy and the gravitational binding energy of the star. This is the…
Gravitational radiation tends to drive gravity modes in rotating neutron stars unstable. For an inviscid star, the instability sets in when the rotation frequency is about 0.7 times the corresponding mode frequency of the nonrotating star.…
We show that burning of a small mass fraction of carbon in a neutron star ocean is thermally unstable at low accumulated masses when the ocean contains heavy ashes from the hydrogen burning rapid proton (rp) process. The key to early…
Coherent oscillations and the evolution of the X-ray spectrum during thermonuclear X-ray bursts in accreting neutron-star X-ray binaries have been studied intensively but separately. We analysed all the X-ray bursts of the source 4U 1728-34…
We report the detection during the JEM-X/INTEGRAL observations of several X-ray bursters of series of close type I X-ray bursts consisting of two or three events with a recurrence time much shorter than the characteristic (at the observed…
Be/X-ray binary systems exhibit both periodic (Type I) X-ray outbursts and giant (Type II) outbursts, whose origin has remained elusive. We suggest that Type II X-ray outbursts occur when a highly misaligned decretion disk around the Be…
Type I X-ray bursts are produced by thermonuclear runaways that develop on accreting neutron stars. Once one location ignites, the flame propagates across the surface of the star. Flame propagation is fundamental in order to understand…
R-modes of a rotating neutron star are unstable because of the emission of gravitational radiation. We explore the saturation amplitudes of these modes determined by nonlinear mode-mode coupling. Modelling the star as incompressible allows…
Simultaneous, precise measurements of the mass $M$ and radius $R$ of neutron stars can yield uniquely valuable information about the still uncertain properties of cold matter at several times the density of nuclear matter. One method that…
We discuss the possibility that astrophysical accretion disks are dynamically unstable to non-axisymmetric disturbances with characteristic scales much smaller than the vertical scale height. The instability is studied using three methods:…
The Be/X-ray transients V0332+53 and 4U 0115+63 exhibited giant, type-II outbursts in 2015. Here we present Swift/XRT follow-up observations at the end of those outbursts. Surprisingly, the sources did not decay back to their known…
Accretion disks around neutron stars regularly undergo sudden strong irradiation by Type I X-ray bursts powered by unstable thermonuclear burning on the stellar surface. We investigate the impact on the disk during one of the first X-ray…
Most Type I X-ray bursts from accreting neutron stars have a lightcurve with a single peak, but there is a rare population of faint bursts that are double or even triple peaked. Suggested mechanisms include polar ignition with equatorial…
We present calculations of the spin-down of a neutron star atmosphere due to hydrostatic expansion during a Type I X-ray burst. We show that (i) Cumming and Bildsten overestimated the spin-down of rigidly-rotating atmospheres by a factor of…
We examine the energy-resolved pulse profiles of 51 flux oscillations observed during the decline of thermonuclear X-ray bursts from accreting weakly- magnetized neutron stars with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. We find that the…