Discovery of GRS 1915+105 variability patterns in the Rapid Burster

Abstract

We report the discovery of two new types of variability in the neutron star low-mass X-ray binary MXB 1730-335 (the 'Rapid Burster'). In one observation in 1999, it exhibits a large-amplitude quasi-periodic oscillation with a period of about 7 min. In another observation in 2008, it exhibits two 4-min long 75 per cent deep dips 44 min apart. These two kinds of variability are very similar to the so-called $\rho$ or 'heartbeat' variability and the $\theta$ variability, respectively, seen in the black hole low-mass X-ray binaries GRS 1915+105 and IGR J17091-3624. This shows that these types of behavior are unrelated to a black hole nature of the accretor. Our findings also show that these kinds of behaviour need not take place at near-Eddington accretion rates. We speculate that they may rather be related to the presence of a relatively wide orbit with an orbital period in excess of a few days and about the relation between these instabilities and the type II bursts.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS letters

References in corpus (5)

• A Parallax Distance to the Microquasar GRS 1915+105 and a Revised Estimate of its Black Hole Mass
• Orbital Period and Outburst Luminosity of Transient Low Mass X-ray Binaries
• High-Resolution X-Ray Spectroscopy of the Bursting Pulsar GRO J1744-28
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• The slow heartbeats of an ultra-luminous X-ray source in NGC 3621
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• Quasi periodic whispers from a transient ULX in M\,101: signatures of a fast-spinning neutron star?
• New insight into the Rapid Burster by Insight-HXMT
• Swift/XRT, Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of IGR J17091-3624 as it returns into quiescence
• Lyapunov functions for a non-linear model of the X-ray bursting of the microquasar GRS 1915+105
• Statistical properties of type-II bursts in Rapid Burster observed with Insight-HXMT
• Light curve fingerprints: an automated approach to the extraction of X-ray variability patterns with feature aggregation -- an example application to GRS 1915+105