{
  "id": "1102.1455",
  "version": "v2",
  "published": "2011-02-07T22:19:32.000Z",
  "updated": "2011-04-07T16:31:25.000Z",
  "title": "On the cooling tails of thermonuclear X-ray bursts: the IGR J17480-2446 link",
  "authors": [
    "M. Linares",
    "D. Chakrabarty",
    "M. van der Klis"
  ],
  "comment": "Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Minor changes after referee's comments. 5 pages, 5 figures",
  "categories": [
    "astro-ph.HE"
  ],
  "abstract": "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 find strong evidence that they all have a thermonuclear origin, despite the fact that many do not show the canonical spectral softening along the decay imprinted on type I X-ray bursts by the cooling of the neutron star photosphere. We show that the persistent-to-burst power ratio is fully consistent with the accretion-to-thermonuclear efficiency ratio along the whole outburst, as is typical for type I X-ray bursts. 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 argue that the apparent lack of cooling is due to the \"non-cooling\" bursts having both a lower peak temperature and a higher non-burst (persistent) emission. 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. Finally, we compare these findings with X-ray bursts from other rapidly accreting neutron stars.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v2",
      "updated": "2011-04-07T16:31:25.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "thermonuclear x-ray bursts",
      "cooling tails",
      "persistent luminosity ratio determines",
      "hz x-ray pulsar igr",
      "lower peak temperature"
    ],
    "tags": [
      "journal article"
    ],
    "publication": {
      "doi": "10.1088/2041-8205/733/2/L17",
      "journal": "The Astrophysical Journal",
      "year": 2011,
      "month": "Jun",
      "volume": 733,
      "number": 2
    },
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 5,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable",
      "inspire": 888961,
      "adsabs": "2011ApJ...733L..17L"
    }
  }
}