New Views of Thermonuclear Bursts

Abstract

Since the advent of powerful new X-ray observatories, NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), the Italian - Dutch BeppoSAX mission, XMM-Newton and Chandra, a number of entirely new phenomena associated with thermonuclear burning on neutron stars have been discovered. These include: (i) the discovery of millisecond (300 - 600 Hz) oscillations during bursts, so called ``burst oscillations'', (ii) a new regime of nuclear burning on neutron stars which manifests itself through the generation of hours long flares about once a decade, now referred to as ``superbursts'',(iii) discoveries of bursts from low accretion rate neutron stars, and (iv) new evidence for discrete spectral features from bursting neutron stars. In this article we review our current understanding of thermonuclear bursts on neutron stars, with a focus on these new phenomena.

45 pages, 17 figures. To appear in Compact Stellar X-Ray Sources, eds. W.H.G. Lewin and M. van der Klis, Cambridge University Press

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The X-ray spectrum of the bursting atoll source 4U~1728-34 observed with INTEGRAL
• Simultaneous INTEGRAL and RXTE observations of the accreting millisecond pulsar HETE J1900.1-2455
• IGR J17254-3257, a new bursting neutron star
• Sonic-Point and Spin-Resonance Model of the Kilohertz QPO Pairs
• Discovery of Thermonuclear Type-I X-ray Bursts from the X-ray binary MAXI J1807+132