Production of Millisecond Dips in Sco X-1 Count Rates by Dead Time Effects

Abstract

Chang et al. (2006) reported millisecond duration dips in the X-ray intensity of Sco X-1 and attributed them to occultations of the source by small trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). We have found multiple lines of evidence that these dips are not astronomical in origin, but rather the result of high-energy charged particle events in the RXTE PCA detectors. Our analysis of the RXTE data indicates that at most 10% of the observed dips in Sco X-1 could be due to occultations by TNOs, and, furthermore, we find no positive or supporting evidence for any of them being due to TNOs. We therefore believe that it is a mistake to conclude that any TNOs have been detected via occultation of Sco X-1.

Submitted to ApJ; uses emulateapj.cls, 8 pages with 8 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Millisecond dips in the RXTE/PCA light curve of Sco X-1 and TNO occultation

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• Pipeline for the Detection of Serendipitous Stellar Occultations by Kuiper Belt Objects with the Colibri Fast-Photometry Array
• Deep searches for X-ray pulsations from Scorpius X-1 and Cygnus X-2 in support of continuous gravitational wave searches