Possible Quasi-Periodic Oscillations from Unstable Accretion: 3D MHD Simulations

TL;DR

This study uses 3D MHD simulations to explore how unstable accretion onto magnetized stars can produce quasi-periodic oscillations, revealing potential observational signatures linked to disk-magnetosphere interactions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that unstable accretion can generate QPOs near the inner disk frequency, a novel insight into variability mechanisms in magnetized accreting stars.

Findings

QPOs are likely near the inner disk orbital frequency.

Unstable accretion produces noisier spectra with smaller amplitudes.

Star's rotation period appears in lightcurves at high misalignment angles.

Abstract

We investigate the photometric variability of magnetized stars, particularly neutron stars, accreting through a magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor-type instability at the disk-magnetosphere interface, and compare it with the variability during stable accretion, with the goal of looking for possible quasi-periodic oscillations. The lightcurves during stable accretion show periodicity at the star's frequency and sometimes twice that, due to the presence of two funnel streams that produce antipodal hotspots near the magnetic poles. On the other hand, lightcurves during unstable accretion through tongues penetrating the magnetosphere are more chaotic due to the stochastic behaviour of the tongues, and produce noisier power spectra. However, the power spectra do show some signs of quasi-periodic variability. Most importantly, the rotation frequency of the tongues and the resulting hotspots is close to the inner-disk orbital frequency, except in the most strongly unstable cases. There is therefore a high probability of observing QPOs at that frequency in longer simulations. In addition, the lightcurves in the unstable regime show periodicity at the star's rotation frequency in many of the cases investigated here, again except in the most strongly unstable cases which lack funnel flows and the resulting antipodal hotspots. The noisier power spectra result in the fractional rms amplitudes of the Fourier peaks being smaller. We also study in detail the effect of the misalignment angle between the rotation and magnetic axes of the star on the variability, and find that at misalignment angles $\gtrsim 25^\circ$, the star's period always appears in the lightcurves.