What do we understand of thermonuclear X-ray bursts after thousands of observations?
Abstract
After four decades of X-ray observations, thousands of X-ray bursts have been detected from about ninety accreting neutron stars. The models that explain them as due to runaway ther-monuclear burning of accreted material, have improved over the years and are successful in describing many details of the burning processes. Certain important global properties, how-ever, are not well understood at all. A prominent example is the mass accretion rate dependence of the bursting behavior. It has been shown that X-ray burst observations can pose mass and radius constraints on the equation of state of the neutron star core. But even with thousands of observed bursts, our lack of a good understanding of the global bursting behavior reduces the strength of these constraints substantially. We review the successes and weaknesses of models in explaining both normal and rare bursts, and we discuss how large burst catalogs, such as the RXTE ASM catalog we are currently compiling, can help make bursts constrain neutron star interior physics.
- Publication:
-
38th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010cosp...38.2565K