A POSSIBLE SIGNATURE OF LENSE-THIRRING PRECESSION IN DIPPING AND ECLIPSING NEUTRON-STAR LOW-MASS X-RAY BINARIES
Relativistic Lense-Thirring precession of a tilted inner accretion disk around a compact object has been proposed as a mechanism for low-frequency (~0.01-70 Hz) quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in the light curves of X-ray binaries. A substantial misalignment angle (~15°-20°) between the inner-dis...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
IOP Publishing,
2015-02-25T15:59:14Z.
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| Online Access: | Get fulltext |
| Summary: | Relativistic Lense-Thirring precession of a tilted inner accretion disk around a compact object has been proposed as a mechanism for low-frequency (~0.01-70 Hz) quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in the light curves of X-ray binaries. A substantial misalignment angle (~15°-20°) between the inner-disk rotation axis and the compact-object spin axis is required for the effects of this precession to produce observable modulations in the X-ray light curve. A consequence of this misalignment is that in high-inclination X-ray binaries the precessing inner disk will quasi-periodically intercept our line of sight to the compact object. In the case of neutron-star systems, this should have a significant observational effect, since a large fraction of the accretion energy is released on or near the neutron-star surface. In this Letter, I suggest that this specific effect of Lense-Thirring precession may already have been observed as ~1 Hz QPOs in several dipping/eclipsing neutron-star X-ray binaries. NWO of the Netherlands (Visitors Grant) |
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