Journal article
The chaotic long-term X-ray variability of 4U 1705-44
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, v 477(4), pp 5220-5237
01 Jul 2018
PMID: 32440030
Abstract
The low-mass X-ray binary 4U1705-44 exhibits dramatic long-term X-ray time variability with a time-scale of several hundred days. The All-Sky Monitor (ASM) aboard the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) and the Japanese Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) aboard the International Space Station together have continuously observed the source from 1995 December through 2014 May. The combined ASM-MAXI data provide a continuous time series over 50 times the length of the time-scale of interest. Topological analysis can help us identify 'fingerprints' in the phase space of a system unique to its equations of motion. The Birman-Williams theorem postulates that if such fingerprints are the same between two systems, then their equations of motion must be closely related. The phase-space embedding of the source light curve shows a strong resemblance to the double-welled non-linear Duffing oscillator. We explore a range of parameters for which the Duffing oscillator closely mirrors the time evolution of 4U1705-44. We extract low period, unstable periodic orbits from the 4U1705-44 and Duffing time series and compare their topological information. The Duffing and 4U1705-44 topological properties are identical, providing strong evidence that they share the same underlying template. This suggests that we can look to the Duffing equation to help guide the development of a physical model to describe the long-term X-ray variability of this and other similarly behaved X-ray binary systems.
Metrics
2 Record Views
Details
- Title
- The chaotic long-term X-ray variability of 4U 1705-44
- Creators
- R. A. Phillipson - Drexel Univ, Dept Phys, 3141 Chestnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USAP. T. Boyd - NASA, Goddard Space Flight Ctr, Astrophys Sci Div, Greenbelt, MD 20771 USAA. P. Smale - NASA, Goddard Space Flight Ctr, Astrophys Sci Div, Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA
- Publication Details
- Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, v 477(4), pp 5220-5237
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Number of pages
- 18
- Grant note
- NNX16AT15H / National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under NASA Education Minority University Research Education Project (MUREP) through the NASA Harriett G. Jenkins Graduate Fellowship
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Physics
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000435630100071
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85060871796
- Other Identifier
- 991022061454104721
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Astronomy & Astrophysics