Maxi observations of long X-ray bursts

TL;DR

This paper reports the detection and analysis of nine long X-ray bursts, including superbursts, from neutron stars observed by MAXI, revealing their properties, origins, and contrast with previously known superburst sources.

Contribution

First systematic report of nine long X-ray bursts from neutron stars observed by MAXI, expanding understanding of superburst characteristics and their source luminosities.

Findings

Nine long X-ray bursts detected by MAXI with durations up to 5.2 hours.

Most bursts originated from transient, low-luminosity X-ray sources.

Burst energies cluster around 10^41 to 10^42 erg.

Abstract

We report nine long X-ray bursts from neutron stars, detected with Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI). Some of these bursts lasted for hours, and hence are qualified as superbursts, which are prolonged thermonuclear flashes on neutron stars and are relatively rare events. MAXI observes roughly 85% of the whole sky every 92 minutes in the 2-20 keV energy band, and has detected nine bursts with a long e-folding decay time, ranging from 0.27 to 5.2 hours, since its launch in 2009 August until 2015 August. The majority of the nine events were found to originate from transient X-ray sources. The persistent luminosities of the sources, when these prolonged bursts were observed, were lower than 1% of the Eddington luminosity for five of them and lower than 20% for the rest. This trend is contrastive to the 18 superbursts observed before MAXI, all but two of which originated from bright persistent sources. The distribution of the total emitted energy, i.e., the product of e-folding time and luminosity, of these bursts clusters around $10^{41}$-$10^{42}$ erg, whereas either of the e-folding time and luminosity ranges for an order of magnitude. Among the nine events, two were from 4U 1850-086 during the phases of relatively low persistent-flux, whereas it usually exhibits standard short X-ray bursts during outbursts.