A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

A Systematic Study of Millihertz Quasiperiodic Oscillations in GS 1826−238




AuthorsXiao, Hua; Ji, Long; Tsygankov, Sergey; Chen, Yupeng; Zhang, Shu; Li, Zhaosheng

PublisherAmerican Astronomical Society

Publishing placeBRISTOL

Publication year2025

JournalAstrophysical Journal

Journal name in sourceThe Astrophysical Journal

Journal acronymASTROPHYS J

Article number180

Volume982

Issue2

Number of pages9

ISSN0004-637X

eISSN1538-4357

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/adbcaa

Web address https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/adbcaa

Self-archived copy’s web addresshttps://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/491709290


Abstract
We performed a systematic investigation of millihertz quasiperiodic oscillations (mHz QPOs) in the low-mass X-ray binary GS 1826-238 observed with NICER and Insight-HXMT. We discovered 37 time intervals exhibiting mHz QPOs out of 106 Good Time Interval (GTI) samples in the frequency range of 3-17 mHz at a significance level of >99.99%. The source remains in a soft state in our study. No significant differences are found between the samples with and without mHz QPOs according to positions in the color-color and hardness-intensity diagrams. These QPOs were discovered at an accretion rate of similar to 0.1M(Edd)(center dot), similar to other sources. The broadband spectrum of GS 1826-238 can be modeled as a combination of a multicolor blackbody from the accretion disk and a Comptonization with seed photons emitted from the neutron star (NS) surface. The flux modulations of mHz QPOs are related to variations of the temperature of Comptonization seed photons, consistent with the marginally stable burning theory.

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Funding information in the publication
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant Nos. 12173103 and 12261141691. This work made use of data from the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and from the Insight-HXMT mission, a project funded by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).


Last updated on 2025-06-05 at 10:44