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.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in MNRAS letters

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Cited by in corpus (20)

• Transient Black Hole Binaries
• A self-lensing binary massive black hole interpretation of quasi-periodic eruptions
• Repetitive Patterns in Rapid Optical Variations in the Nearby Black-hole Binary V404 Cygni
• Magnetically Dominated Disks in Tidal Disruption Events and Quasi-Periodic Eruptions
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• A shared accretion instability for black holes and neutron stars
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• The slow heartbeats of an ultra-luminous X-ray source in NGC 3621
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• 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