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Register a new userThe Moving Hotspots model for kHz QPOs in accreting neutron stars
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3D MHD simulation of accretion onto neutron stars have shown in the last few years that the footprint (hotspot) of the accretion flow changes with time. Two different kinds of accretion, namely the funnel flow and the equatorial accretion produced by instabilities at the inner disk, produce different kinds of motion of the hotspot. The funnel flow produces hotspots that move around the magnetic pole, while instabilities produce other hotspots that appear randomly and move along the equator or slightly above. The angular velocities of the two hotspots are different, the equatorial one being higher and both close to the Keplerian velocity in the inner region. Modeling of the lightcurves of these hotspots with Monte Carlo simulations show that the signatures produced in power specra by them, if observed, are QPOs plus low frequency components. Their frequencies, general behavior and features describe correctly most of the properties of kHz QPOs, if we assume the funnel flow hotspots as the origin of the lower kHz QPO and instabilities as the origin of the upper kHz QPO.
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{We investigate the coherence of the twin kilohertz quasi-periodic oscillations (kHz QPOs) in the low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) theoretically. The profile of upper kHz QPO, interpreted as Keplerian frequency, is ascribed to the radial extent of the kHz QPO emission region, associated with the transitional layer at the magnetosphere-disk boundary, which corresponds to the coherence of upper kHz QPO. The theoretical model for Q-factor of upper kHz QPO is applied to the observational data of five Atoll and five Z sources, and the consistence is implied.
Recent studies show that accretion flows around weakly magnetic Neutron Stars undergo multiple shocks, before reaching the surface of the star, which contribute to the spectral and timing variabilities observed in the X-Rays. Here, we report, for the first time, the spectral properties of a unified model of shocked accretion flows around Neutron Stars, based on the Two-Component Advective Flow paradigm. We compare our theoretical results with the X-Ray spectral features of Z and Atoll sources, across different states. We also fit RXTE/PCA spectra of Sco X-1 and 4U 1705-44 to show the potential application of this new model.
We studied the correlations between spin frequencies and kilohertz quasi-periodic oscillations (kHz QPOs) in neutron star low mass X-ray binaries. The updated data of kHz QPOs and spin frequencies are statistically analyzed. We found that when two simultaneous kHz QPOs are present in the power spectrum, the minimum frequency of upper kHz QPO is at least 1.3 times larger than the spin frequency, i.e. u_{s}< u_{2min}/1.3. We also found that the average kHz QPO peak separation in 6 Atoll sources anti-correlates with the spin frequency in the form landnran = -(0.19pm0.05) s+(389.40pm21.67)Hz. If we shifted this correlation in the direction of the peak separation by a factor of 1.5, this correlation matches the data points of the two accretion powered millisecond X-ray pulsars, SAX J1808.4-3658 and XTE J1807-294.
We take the recently published data of twin kHz quasi-period oscillations (QPOs) in neutron star (NS) lowmass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) as the samples, and investigate the morphology of the samples, which focuses on the quality factor, peak frequency of kHz QPOs, and try to infer their physical mechanism. We notice that: (1) The quality factors of upper kHz QPOs are low (2 ~ 20 in general) and increase with the kHz QPO peak frequencies for both Z and Atoll sources. (2) The distribution of quality factor versus frequency for the lower kHz QPOs are quite different between Z and Atoll sources. For most Z source samples, the quality factors of lower kHz QPOs are low (usually lower than 15) and rise steadily with the peak frequencies except for Sco X-1, which drop abruptly at the frequency of about 750 Hz. While for most Atoll sources, the quality factors of lower kHz QPOs are very high (from 2 to 200) and usually have a rising part, a maximum and an abrupt drop. (3) There are three Atoll sources (4U 1728-34, 4U 1636-53 and 4U 1608-52) of displaying very high quality factors for lower kHz QPOs. These three sources have been detected with the spin frequencies and sidebands, in which the source with higher spin frequency presents higher quality factor of lower kHz QPOs and lower difference between sideband frequency and lower kHz QPO frequency.
The crust of accreting neutron stars plays a central role in many different observational phenomena. In these stars, heavy elements produced by H-He burning in the rapid proton capture (rp-) process continually freeze to form new crust. In this paper, we explore the expected composition of the solid phase. We first demonstrate using molecular dynamics that two distinct types of chemical separation occur, depending on the composition of the rp-process ashes. We then calculate phase diagrams for three-component mixtures and use them to determine the allowed crust compositions. We show that, for the large range of atomic numbers produced in the rp-process ($Zsim 10$--$50$), the solid that forms has only a small number of available compositions. We conclude that accreting neutron star crusts should be polycrystalline, with domains of distinct composition. Our results motivate further work on the size of the compositional domains, and have implications for crust physics and accreting neutron star phenomenology.
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