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AstroSat observation of rapid type-I thermonuclear burst from low-mass X-ray binary GX 3\(+\)1

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Abstract

We report the results of an observation of low-mass X-ray binary GX 3\(+\)1 with AstroSat’s large area X-ray proportional counter (LAXPC) and soft X-ray telescope (SXT) instruments on-board for the first time. We have detected type-I thermonuclear burst (\(\sim \)15 s) present in the LAXPC 20 light curve with a double peak feature at higher energies and our study of the hardness–intensity diagram reveals that the source was in a soft banana state. The pre-burst emission could be described well by a thermally Comptonized model component. The burst spectra is modeled adopting a time-resolved spectroscopic method using a single color blackbody model added to the pre-burst model, to monitor the parametric changes as the burst decays. Based on our time-resolved spectroscopy, we claim that the detected burst is a photospheric radius expansion (PRE) burst. During the PRE phase, the blackbody flux is found to be approximately constant at an averaged value of \(\sim \)2.56 in \(10^{-8}\) ergs s\(^{-1}\) cm\(^{-2}\) units. On the basis of literature survey, we infer that AstroSat/LAXPC 20 has detected a burst from GX 3\(+\)1 after more than a decade, which is also a PRE one. Utilizing the obtained burst parameters, we provide a new estimation to the source distance, which is \(\sim \) \(9.3 \pm 0.4\) kpc, calculated for an isotropic burst emission. Finally, we discuss and compare our findings with the published literature reports.

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Notes

  1. http://astrosat-ssc.iucaa.in/?q=sxtData.

  2. www.tifr.res.in/~astrosat_sxt.

  3. http://astrosat-ssc.iucaa.in/?q=laxpcData.

  4. https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftools/others/qdp/qdp.html.

  5. https://www.tifr.res.in/~astrosat_sxt/dataana_up/readme_sxt_arf_data_analysis.txt.

  6. https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xanadu/xspec/manual/node137.html.

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Acknowledgements

This report work has utilized the softwares provided by the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Centre (HEASARC). The authors AN and BS acknowledge the financial support of ISRO under AstroSat archival Data utilization program (no. DS_2B-13013(2)/2/2019-Sec.2). This publication uses data from the AstroSat mission of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), archived at the Indian Space Science Data Centre (ISSDC). AN acknowledges the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, for the periodic visits, the hospitality and the facilities provided to him to make possible the major part of the work. This work has been performed utilizing the calibration data bases and auxillary analysis tools developed, maintained and distributed by AstroSat–SXT team with members from various institutions in India and abroad. This research has made use of MAXI data provided by RIKEN, JAXA and the MAXI team (Matsuoka et al. 2009). BS also acknowledges the visiting associateship program at IUCAA and is grateful to IUCAA for hospitality during his visits, where part of this work was done. AN thanks Dr M. Pahari, Royal Society SERB International Fellow for his useful suggestions in this work. AN personally thanks the scholar mates from Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi, and other fellow mates who helped him to resolve issues faced in this work. BS would like to acknowledge discussions held with Dr Anjali Rao during the initial stages of this work. Authors are also indebted to the reviewer for providing beneficial suggestions and constructive comments, which has greatly enhanced the quality of the work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Sciences, Tezpur University, Napaam, Tezpur, 784028, India

    Ankur Nath & Biplob Sarkar

  2. Faculty of Science and Technology, The ICFAI University Tripura, Agartala, 799210, India

    Ankur Nath

  3. Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Post Bag 4, Ganeshkhind, Pune, 411007, India

    Jayashree Roy & Ranjeev Misra

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  1. Ankur Nath
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  2. Biplob Sarkar
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  3. Jayashree Roy
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  4. Ranjeev Misra
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Correspondence to Biplob Sarkar.

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Nath, A., Sarkar, B., Roy, J. et al. AstroSat observation of rapid type-I thermonuclear burst from low-mass X-ray binary GX 3\(+\)1. J Astrophys Astron 43, 93 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12036-022-09878-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12036-022-09878-9

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