6,577 research outputs found
X-ray bursters and the X-ray sources of the galactic bulge
Type 1 X-ray bursts, optical, infrared, and radio properties of the galactic bulge sources, are discussed. It was proven that these burst sources are neutron stars in low mass, close binary stellar systems. Several burst sources are found in globular clusters with high central densities. Optical type 1 X-ray bursts were observed from three sources. Type 2 X-ray bursts, observed from the Rapid Burster, are due to an accretion instability which converts gravitational potential energy into heat and radiation, which makes them of a fundamentally different nature from Type 1 bursts
Latitudinal Shear Instabilities during Type I X-ray Bursts
Coherent oscillations have been observed during Type I X-ray bursts from 14
accreting neutron stars in low mass X-ray binaries, providing important
information about their spin frequencies. However, the origin of the brightness
asymmetry on the neutron star surface producing these oscillations is still not
understood. We study the stability of a zonal shearing flow on the neutron star
surface using a shallow water model. We show that differential rotation of >2%
between pole and equator, with the equator spinning faster than the poles, is
unstable to hydrodynamic shear instabilities. The unstable eigenmodes have
properties well-matched to burst oscillations: low azimuthal wavenumber m, wave
speeds 1 or 2% below the equatorial spin rate, and e-folding times close to a
second. Instability is related to low frequency buoyantly driven r-modes that
have a mode frequency within the range of rotation frequencies in the
differentially rotating shell. We discuss the implications for burst
oscillations. Growth of shear instabilities may explain the brightness
asymmetry in the tail of X-ray bursts, although some fine tuning of the level
of differential rotation and a spin frequency near 300 Hz are required in order
for the fastest growing mode to have m=1. If shear instabilities are to operate
during a burst, temperature contrasts of 30% across the star must be created
during ignition and spreading of the flash.Comment: To appear in ApJ (12 pages, 11 figures
Relativistic Iron Lines in Galactic Black Holes: Recent Results and Lines in the ASCA Archive
Recent observations with Chandra and XMM-Newton, aided by broad-band spectral
coverage from RXTE, have revealed skewed relativistic iron emission lines in
stellar-mass Galactic black hole systems. Such systems are excellent
laboratories for testing General Relativity, and relativistic iron lines
provide an important tool for making such tests. In this contribution to the
Proceedings of the 10th Annual Marcel Grossmann Meeting on General Relativity,
we briefly review recent developments and present initial results from fits to
archival ASCA observations of Galactic black holes. It stands to reason that
relativistic effects, if real, should be revealed in many systems (rather than
just one or two); the results of our archival work have borne-out this
expectation. The ASCA spectra reveal skewed, relativistic lines in XTE
J1550-564, GRO J1655-40, GRS 1915+105, and Cygnus X-1.Comment: to appear in the proc. of the 10th Annual Marcel Grossmann Meeting on
General Relativity, 5 pages, 1 figure, uses specific .cls and .sty file
Norm Optimal Iterative Learning Control with Application to Problems in Accelerator based Free Electron Lasers and Rehabilitation Robotics
This paper gives an overview of the theoretical basis of the norm optimal approach to iterative learning control followed by results that describe more recent work which has experimentally benchmarking the performance that can be achieved. The remainder of then paper then describes its actual application to a physical process and a very novel application in stroke rehabilitation
Coulomb Charging Effects for Finite Channel Number
We consider quantum fluctuations of the charge on a small metallic grain
caused by virtual electron tunneling to a nearby electrode. The average
electron number and the effective charging energy are determined by means of
perturbation theory in the tunneling Hamiltonian. In particular we discuss the
dependence of charging effects on the number N of tunneling channels. Earlier
results for N>>1 are found to be approached rather rapidly with increasing N.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
Faint X-ray Sources in the Globular Cluster Terzan 5
We report our analysis of a Chandra X-ray observation of the rich globular
cluster Terzan 5, in which we detect 50 sources to a limiting 1.0-6 keV X-ray
luminosity of 3*10^{31} ergs/s within the half-mass radius of the cluster.
Thirty-three of these have L_X>10^{32} ergs/s, the largest number yet seen in
any globular cluster. In addition to the quiescent low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB,
identified by Wijnands et al.), another 12 relatively soft sources may be
quiescent LMXBs. We compare the X-ray colors of the harder sources in Terzan 5
to the Galactic Center sources studied by Muno and collaborators, and find the
Galactic Center sources to have harder X-ray colors, indicating a possible
difference in the populations. We cannot clearly identify a metallicity
dependence in the production of low-luminosity X-ray binaries in Galactic
globular clusters, but a metallicity dependence of the form suggested by Jordan
et al. for extragalactic LMXBs is consistent with our data.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures (3 color). Resubmitted to ApJ after
incorporating referee comments. v2: Added references to introductio
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