The Thermal Evolution following a Superburst on an Accreting Neutron Star | Zendy

A. Cumming | Zendy; Jared Macbeth | Zendy

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The Thermal Evolution following a Superburst on an Accreting Neutron Star

Author(s) -

A. Cumming,

Jared Macbeth

Publication year - 2004

Publication title -

the astrophysical journal

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 2.376

H-Index - 489

eISSN - 1538-4357

pISSN - 0004-637X

DOI - 10.1086/382873

Subject(s) - neutron star , astrophysics , physics , star (game theory) , x ray burster , astronomy , thermal , stellar evolution , stellar mass loss , stars , meteorology

Superbursts are very energetic Type I X-ray bursts discovered in recent yearsby long term monitoring of X-ray bursters, and believed to be due to unstableignition of carbon in the deep ocean of the neutron star. In this Letter, wefollow the thermal evolution of the surface layers as they cool following theburst. The resulting lightcurves agree very well with observations for layermasses and energy releases in the range expected from ignition calculations. Atlate times, the cooling flux from the layer decays as a power law in time,giving timescales for quenching of normal Type I bursting of weeks, in goodagreement with observational limits. We show that simultaneous modelling ofsuperburst lightcurves and quenching times promises to constrain both thethickness of the fuel layer and the energy deposited.Comment: To appear in ApJ Letters (4 pages, 4 figures

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