Friday, October 5, 2012

Low-frequency QPO from the 11 Hz accreting pulsar in Terzan 5: not frame dragging. (arXiv:1210.1494v1 [astro-ph.HE])

Low-frequency QPO from the 11 Hz accreting pulsar in Terzan 5: not frame dragging. (arXiv:1210.1494v1 [astro-ph.HE]):
We report on 6 RXTE observations taken during the 2010 outburst of the 11 Hz
accreting pulsar IGR J17480-2446 located in the globular cluster Terzan 5.
During these observations we find power spectra which resemble those seen in
Z-type high-luminosity neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries, with a
quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) in the 35-50 Hz range simultaneous with a kHz
QPO and broad band noise. Using well known frequency-frequency correlations, we
identify the 35-50 Hz QPOs as the horizontal branch oscillations (HBO), which
were previously suggested to be due to Lense-Thirring precession. As IGR
J17480-2446 spins more than an order of magnitude more slowly than any of the
other neutron stars where these QPOs were found, this QPO can not be explained
by frame dragging. By extension, this casts doubt on the Lense-Thirring
precession model for other low-frequency QPOs in neutron-star and perhaps even
black-hole systems.

No comments:

Post a Comment