Energy dependence of r.m.s amplitude of low frequency broadband noise and kHz quasi periodic oscillations in 4U 1608-52
Abstract
The neutron star low mass X-ray binary 4U 1608-52 is known to show kHz QPOs as well as low frequency broad band noise. The energy dependence of the fractional r.m.s of these variations reflect the underlying radiative mechanism responsible for the phenomena. In this work we compute the energy depedence for 26 instances of kHz QPO observed by RXTE. We typically find as reported before, that the r.m.s increases with energy with slope of ∼0.5. This indicates that the variation is in the hot thermal compotonization component and in particular the QPO is likely to be driven by variation in the thermal heating rate of the hot plasma. For the same data, we compute the energy dependent r.m.s variability of the low frequency broad band noise component by considering the light curves. In contrast to the behaviour seen for the kHz QPO, the energy dependence is nearly flat i.e. the r.m.s. is energy independent. This indicates that the driver here may be the soft photon source. Thus the radiative mechanism driving the low frequency broad band noise and the high frequency QPO are different in nature.
- Publication:
-
41st COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- July 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016cosp...41E1234M