Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
1998-06-18
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
11 pages, 4 figures. AASTeX, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters
Scientific paper
10.1086/311545
We report on the long term stability of the millisecond oscillations observed with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) during thermonuclear X-ray bursts from the low mass X-ray binaries (LMXB) 4U 1728-34 and 4U 1636-53. We show that bursts from 4U 1728-34 spanning more than 1.5 years have observed asymptotic oscillation periods which are within 0.2 microsec. of each other, well within the magnitude which could be produced by the orbital motion of the neutron star in a typical LMXB. This stability implies a timescale to change the oscillation period of > 23,000 years, suggesting a highly stable process such as stellar rotation as the oscillation mechanism. We show that period offsets in three distinct bursts from 4U 1636-53 can be plausibly interpreted as due to orbital motion of the neutron star in this 3.8 hour binary system. We discuss the constraints on the mass function which can in principle be derived using this technique.
Lapidus Iosif
Strohmayer Tod E.
Swank Jean H.
Zhang William
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