2018/05/15 by Zach Meisel · 55 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Accretion disc #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Bursting #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Light curve #Neutron #Neutron star #Nuclear reaction #Stars #Stellar evolution #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aac3d3
published in The Astrophysical Journal 860(2), 147 (IOP Publishing) · Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal
arxiv created 2018/05/15 · openalex created_date 2018/06/01 · openalex publication_date 2018/06/20 · arxiv updated 2018/06/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Abstract Type-I X-ray burst light curves encode unique information about the structure of accreting neutron stars and the nuclear reaction rates of the rp -process that powers bursts. Using the first model calculations of hydrogen/helium-burning bursts for a large range of astrophysical conditions performed with the code MESA , this work shows that simultaneous model–observation comparisons for bursts from several accretion rates are required to remove degeneracies in astrophysical conditions that otherwise reproduce bursts for a single and that such consistent multi-epoch modeling could possibly limit the 15 O( α , γ ) 19 Ne reaction rate. Comparisons to the 1998, 2000, and 2007 bursting epochs of the neutron star GS 1826-24 show that must be larger than previously inferred and that the shallow heating in this source must be below 0.5 MeV/u, providing a new method to constrain the shallow heating mechanism in the outer layers of accreting neutron stars. Features of the light curve rise are used to demonstrate that a lower limit could likely be placed on the 15 O( α , γ ) reaction rate, demonstrating the possibility of constraining nuclear reaction rates with X-ray burst light curves.