# X-ray bursts from 1RXS J170930.2-263927 = XTE J1709-267

## 1 Introduction

1RXS J170930.2-263927 was first observed in hard X-rays with the Proportional Counter Array (PCA) on board the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) (Marshall et al. (1997)). The source, reported as a new XTE transient source (XTE J1709-267), was detected for about 20 s during two different satellite manoeuvres, on 1997 January 16.016 and 1997 January 18.147 respectively. The uncertainty of the source position was estimated to be 6’, suggesting a possible association of XTE J1709-267 with the soft X-ray source 1RXS J170930.2-263927 included in the ROSAT All-Sky Survey catalogue (Voges et al. (1996)), 5’ from the PCA centroid position (see Figure 3).   
A possible radio counterpart of the source was found in the 1.42 and 4.9 GHz bands (Hjellming & Rupen (1997)). The radio position, given with better than 1” uncertainty, is $`2\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}8`$ from the PCA centroid position and 6’ from the ROSAT position. So the hard X-ray source could only be associated either with 1RXS J170930.2-263927 or with the proposed radio counterpart, but not with both.   
The X-ray characteristics of the RXTE source are not known in detail. The spectrum obtained by the PCA could be fitted with a power law function<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1 i.e. n(E) $``$ E, where n(E) is the number of photons with energy E and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the photon index.  with a $`3.06\pm 0.06`$ photon index or by a thermal bremsstrahlung model with kT= $`4.7\pm 0.2`$ keV. In both cases the column density was found in excess of $`2\times 10^{22}`$ cm<sup>-2</sup>, thus indicating the source to be close to the Galactic Center. During the PCA observations the source had an intensity of 140 mCrab in the 2-10 keV band, while the 1-2.4 keV flux of 1RXS J170930.2-263927 at its detection time (spring 1996) was only 13 mCrab.   
After its detection in hard X-rays, 1RXS J170930.2-263927 was monitored by the All Sky Monitor (ASM) on board RXTE in the 2-10 keV range. The source was still bright (140-200 mCrab) up to February 20, then declined to 80-120 mCrab (March 12-18) and to 25-65 mCrab since March 19. The source was no longer in outburst since April 7, its daily averaged flux being below 13 mCrab.   
The RXTE-ASM lightcurve of the outburst is displayed in Figure 1. The lightcurve does not show uncommon features when compared with the average lightcurves of the X-ray novae. Following the morphological classification proposed by Chen, Shrader, & Livio (1997), we can associate the source with the fast-rise exponential-decay class, even if the decay looks almost linear and perhaps dropping faster about 50 days after the maximum. The ASM peak luminosity of the outburst is 0.21 Crab, a rather low but not uncommon value among the X-ray novae, where selection effects in the studied samples are not negligible. We can derive that at the outburst epoch the source intensity increased by more than an order of magnitude.

In the next Section we summarize the BeppoSAX-WFC telescope characteristics and report on the observations of 1RXS J170930.2-263927. In Section 3 the performed spectral and time analysis are presented, while in Section 4 the implications of our results on the knowledge of the source characteristics are briefly discussed. In particular, the association of 1RXS J170930.2-263927 with the class of transient neutron-star low-mass X-ray binaries is proposed.

## 2 Observations

The Wide Field Cameras (WFC) on board the BeppoSAX satellite consist of two identical coded mask telescopes (Jager et al. (1997)). The two cameras point in opposite directions each covering a $`40\mathrm{°}\times 40\mathrm{°}`$ field of view. This field of view is the largest ever flown for an X-ray imaging device. With its source location accuracy better than $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}6`$ (68% confidence level), a time resolution of 0.244 ms, and an energy resolution of 18% at 6 keV, the WFCs are very effective in studying hard X-ray (2-28 keV) transient phenomena. The imaging capability, combined with the good instrument sensitivity (a few mCrab in $`10^4`$ s), allows an accurate monitoring of complex sky regions, like the Galactic Bulge.   
The data of the two cameras are systematically searched for bursts and flares by analyzing the time profiles of the detectors in the 2-11 keV energy range with a 1 s time resolution. Reconstructed sky images are generated for any statistically meaningful enhancement, to identify possible bursters. The accuracy of the reconstructed position, which of course depends on the burst intensity, is typically better than 5’. This analysis procedure demonstrated its effectiveness throughout the Galactic Bulge WFC monitoring (Cocchi et al. 1997a ), leading to the identification of $`530`$ X-ray bursts, 156 of which from the Bursting Pulsar GRO J1744-28, in a total of about 1100 ks observing time (the exposure time values are corrected for all dead times due to Earth occultation and South Atlantic Anomaly). A total of 12 new X-ray bursting sources were found.

1RXS J170930.2-263927 is in the the field of view whenever the WFCs point at the Galactic Centre region, being $`9\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}4`$ away from the Sgr A position. The Galactic Bulge field was observed for a total of about 1100 ks, the monitoring being divided in 4 observation campaigns during 1996 through 1998. Unfortunately, 1RXS J170930.2-263927 was out of visibility at the epoch of the outburst onset (January ’97), so only data from the declining phase and quiescence are available.

During a 102.6 ks observation started on 1997 March 18.04 a burst was detected at a position consistent with that of 1RXS J170930.2-263927 at March 18.21058 UT (Cocchi et al. 1997b ). The event occurred during the egress from the Earth’s occultation. Two more bursts were detected from the same position in a different observation shift that started on April 13.16 and lasting for 97.8 ks. The time profiles of the three bursts are plotted in Figure 2. The displayed profiles of the bursts are detector profiles constructed by integrating the photons in the source-illuminated part of the detector. This improves the signal to noise ratio of the event. The background is the sum of the diffuse X-ray background, the particles background and the contamination of other sources in the field of view. Source contamination is the dominating background component for crowded fields like the Galactic Bulge. Neverthless, the probability of source confusion during a short time scale event like an X-ray burst is negligible. Details on the three observed bursts are summarized in Table 1.   
Burst searches from 1RXS J170930.2-263927 were performed on all the data available from the ’96-’98 BeppoSAX-WFC Galactic Bulge monitoring campaigns but no other events were detected.

## 3 Data Analysis

The steady emission of 1RXS J170930.2-263927 during its declining phase in March ’97 has been investigated. We analyzed data from two observations which started on March 13.52 and March 18.04 (U.T.) for a total of 170.6 ks exposure time.   
The intensity of the source was found to be fairly constant throughout the two observations, the average flux being about 28 mCrab. The data was split in five data subsets in order to investigate possible spectral variability on 1 day timescale. The fitted parameters over all the subsets are consistent with a constant spectrum, thus excluding spectral variability during the involved epochs. Two spectral models were applied to the average spectrum over all the five subsets: an absorbed power law function and a thermal bremsstrahlung spectrum. The calculated parameters, which are consistent with the ones reported by RXTE-PCA, are shown in Table 2.

An absorbed blackbody model was adopted to fit the spectra of the three bursts. To better constrain the fit, the $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ parameter was kept fixed ($`N_\mathrm{H}`$ = $`2\times 10^{22}`$ cm<sup>-2</sup>) according to what was obtained from the spectral analysis of the steady emission by using WFC and RXTE-PCA data. Moreover, two time-resolved spectra were obtained for the 2nd burst, i.e. a ”peak spectrum” (data from the first 6 s of the burst) and a ”tail spectrum” (the next 9 s of burst data). A summary of the spectral parameters of the three bursts is given in Table 1.   
Blackbody spectra allow to determine the relationship between the average radius of the emitting sphere $`R_{\mathrm{km}}`$ (in units of km) and the source distance $`d_{10\mathrm{kpc}}`$ (in units of 10 kpc). In Table 1 the values of the $`R_{\mathrm{km}}`$/$`d_{10\mathrm{kpc}}`$ ratios are given, assuming isotropic emission and not correcting for gravitational redshift and conversion to true blackbody temperature from color temperature (see Lewin, van Paradijs, & Taam (1993) for details).

The calculated WFC centroid position of the observed hard X-ray source was found to be consistent with that of the soft ROSAT source 1RXS J170930.2-263927 (Cocchi et al. 1997a ). In Figure 3 a sky map is shown with the error circles of the position we calculated for the March 18 persistent emission and for the three bursts. The WFC position is almost coincident with the ROSAT one, thus associating the hard X-ray XTE source with the soft X-ray ROSAT source 1RXS J170930.2-263927. A possible association of both the soft and the hard X-ray sources with the proposed radio counterpart, which lies more than 5’ away, is ruled out.

## 4 Discussion

Up to date, transient phenomena like hard X-ray bursts with typical durations less than a few minutes are classified in two main types (Hoffman, Marshall, & Lewin (1978)).   
Type-I bursts originate from thermonuclear flashes onto a neutron star surface (Woosley & Taam (1976); Joss (1978); Taam & Picklum (1979)). All the type-I bursting sources are associated with low mass binary systems (LMXBs), following the identification of their optical counterparts or, indirectly, from spectral or stellar population (e.g. globular cluster sources) characteristics (van Paradijs (1995)). The observed spectra of the bursts are typically well fitted by thermal blackbody emission models having temperatures k$``$3 keV (Swank et al. (1977)). The time profiles of type-I bursts show fast rise times, ranging from less than 1 s up to 10 s, and longer decay times, ranging from seconds to minutes. They strongly depend on photon energy, decays being shorter at higher energies, so that bursts appear to soften during the decay. This softening has been suggested to originate from the cooling of the neutron star photosphere (e.g. Lewin, van Paradijs, & Taam (1995)).   
Type-II bursts have been observed only in two peculiar cases, namely the Rapid Burster MXB 1730-335 (Lewin et al. (1976)) and the Bursting Pulsar GRO J1744-28 (Kouveliotou et al. (1996)). They show no spectral softening and are frequently repeated in time, intervals ranging from a few seconds to hours. Blackbody fits to the type-II bursts are unacceptably poor. Comptonized models for MXB 1730-335 (Stella et al. (1988)) and a power law function model for GRO J1744-28 (Giles et al. (1996)) fit the data better. Moreover, the Bursting Pulsar spectra of the steady emission and the bursts are very similar. Type-II bursts are thought to originate from accretion instabilities (Lewin et al. 1995).

On the basis of their spectral properties and time profiles, we interpret the three bursts detected from 1RXS J170930.2-263927 as type-I bursts. Even though the statistical quality of the data is limited, the blackbody emission and the measured color temperatures are consistent with type-I bursts. Spectral softening is marginally observed in time resolved spectra of burst 2 and energy resolved time profiles of all the bursts (see Table 1). Average decay times of $`8\pm 2`$ s (2-6 keV) and $`4\pm 1`$ s (6-18 keV) are obtained.   
Type-I bursts strongly suggest a neutron star nature for the binary system. This indicates 1RXS J170930.2-263927 as a transient neutron-star LMXB.   
In principle, it is possible that 1RXS J170930.2-263927 had bursting behaviour even before the January 1997 outburst, as the bursts occurrence doesn’t seem to be related to the persistent flux (bursts 2 and 3 occurred when the steady flux had dropped by a factor $`10`$ with respect to the time of burst 1, see Table 1). On the other hand, it is possible that the outburst itself triggered the type-I burst mechanism, due to an increased accretion rate from the companion star and that the physical conditions that activated the bursts persisted even after the source entered a quiescent phase. This scenario seems likely since no bursting activity was detected from 1RXS J170930.2-263927 in the autumn ’96 and autumn ’97 observation campaigns.

Bursting activity from LMXB transients have already been reported in about 10 cases (e.g. Rapid Burster, Aql X-1, Cen X-4, 0748-673, 1658-298, SAXJ 1808.4-3658, see Hoffman et al. 1978, Tanaka & Shibazaki (1996), Lewin et al. 1995, and references therein, In ’t Zand et al. (1998)), thus indicating the sources to be neutron-star binaries. Most ($`85\%`$) of the LMXB harbouring a neutron star are persistent sources, while all the black hole candidates in low-mass systems are transient sources (van Paradijs (1995)). Among the LMXB transients a quite large fraction of sources ($`30\%`$, according to Chen et al. 1997, $`45\%`$, according to Tanaka & Shibazaki (1996)) are neutron-star systems, the rest being black hole binaries. The population of black hole LMXB could be overstimated, since most of them are suggested as black hole candidates on the basis of their spectral characteristics only. Actually, for only 7 out of about 40 known transient LMXB the available mass functions suggest black hole systems (Chen et al. 1997).   
Thus, the detection of type-I X-ray burst in X-ray novae can help to better constrain the populations.

Due to the uncertainty in the distance of the source, interesting parameters such as the luminosity of 1RXS J170930.2-263927 both in outburst and in quiescence, the blackbody emitting region radius during the bursts and the peak luminosities of the bursts cannot be satisfactorily constrained. The interpolated $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ value computed at the ROSAT given position is $`2.3\times 10^{21}`$ cm<sup>-2</sup> (Dickey & Lockman (1990)), about an order of magnitude lower than the measured value, thus suggesting intrinsic absorption. This makes it difficult to use the observed $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ as a distance indicator.   
A rough upper limit for the source distance can be obtained assuming the observed bursts had luminosities below the Eddington limit ($`L_{\mathrm{Edd}}2\times 10^{38}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup>). Low blackbody temperatures ($`<2.5`$ keV) and no evidence of double-peaked profiles (a clue of photospheric radius expansion) support this assumption for type-I bursts (Lewin et al. 1995). Correcting for interstellar absorption, for burst 2 we obtain a bolometric flux of $`L_\mathrm{b}=1.6\times 10^8`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup>cm<sup>-2</sup>. Assuming $`L_\mathrm{b}L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$, this leads to a maximum distance of $`10\pm 1`$ kpc, but a lower distance value is likely since the source is at relatively high ($`7\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}9`$) galactic latitude. We then derive upper limits of $`8\times 10^{37}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> for the outburst peak luminosity and $`1\times 10^{36}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> for the persistent emission at the bursts 2,3 epochs. An upper limit of $`10`$ km is also obtained for the average radius of the blackbody emitting region during the observed bursts, a value supporting the neutron star identification.

We thank the staff of the BeppoSAX Science Operation Centre and Science Data Centre for their help in carrying out and processing the WFC Galactic Centre observations. The BeppoSAX satellite is a joint Italian and Dutch program. M.C., A.B., L.N. and P.U. thank Agenzia Spaziale Nazionale (ASI) for grant support.