Determining the masses and radii of rapidly rotating, oblate neutron stars using energy-resolved waveforms of their X-ray burst oscillations
Abstract
We have developed new, more sophisticated, and much faster Bayesian analysis methods that enable us to estimate the masses and radii of rapidly rotating, oblate neutron stars using the energy-resolved waveforms of their X-ray burst oscillations and to determine the uncertainties in these mass and radius estimates. We first generate the energy-resolved burst oscillation waveforms that would be produced by a hot spot on various rapidly rotating, oblate stars, using the oblate-star Schwarzschild-spacetime (OS) approximation. In generating these synthetic data, we assume that 1 million counts have been collected from the hot spot and that the background is 9 million counts. This produces a realistic modulation amplitude and a total number of counts comparable to the number that could be obtained by a future space mission such as the proposed LOFT or AXTAR missions or the accepted NICER mission by combining data from many bursts from a given star. We then compute the joint posterior distribution of the mass M and radius R in standard models, for each synthetic waveform, and use these posterior distributions to determine the 1-, 2-, and 3-sigma confidence regions in the M-R plane for each synthetic waveform and model. We report here the confidence regions obtained when Schwarzschild+Doppler (S+D) and OS waveform models are used, including results obtained when the properties of the star used to generate the synthetic waveform data differ from the properties of the star used in modeling the waveform. These results are based on research supported by NSF grant AST0709015 at the University of Illinois and NSF grant AST0708424 at the University of Maryland.
- Publication:
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AAS/High Energy Astrophysics Division #14
- Pub Date:
- August 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014HEAD...1412206L