Discovery and Identification of MAXI J1621–501 as a Type I X-Ray Burster with a Super-orbital Period
Name
Gorgone_2019_ApJ_884_168.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.21 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
5b763d32fd969a77e45f7db218abc32b
Author(s)
Gorgone, Nicholas M
Kouveliotou, Chryssa
Negoro, Hitoshi
Wijers, Ralph AMJ
Bozzo, Enrico
Guiriec, Sylvain
Bult, Peter
Huppenkothen, Daniela
Göğüş, Ersin
Bahramian, Arash
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.. MAXI J1621-501 is the first Swift/XRT Deep Galactic Plane Survey transient that was followed up with a multitude of space missions (NuSTAR, Swift, Chandra, NICER, INTEGRAL, and MAXI) and ground-based observatories (Gemini, IRSF, and ATCA). The source was discovered with MAXI on 2017 October 19 as a new, unidentified transient. Further observations with NuSTAR revealed two Type I X-ray bursts, identifying MAXI J1621-501 as a low mass x-ray binary with a neutron star primary. Overall, 24 Type I bursts were detected from the source during a 15 month period. At energies below 10 keV, the source spectrum was best fit with three components: an absorbed blackbody with kT = 2.3 keV, a cutoff power law with index Γ = 0.7, and an emission line centered on 6.3 keV. Timing analysis of the X-ray persistent emission and burst data has not revealed coherent pulsations from the source or an orbital period. We identified, however, a super-orbital period ∼78 days in the source X-ray light curve. This period agrees very well with the theoretically predicted radiative precession period of ∼82 days. Thus, MAXI J1621-501 joins a small group of sources characterized with super-orbital periods.
MIT Department
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/AB3E43
