# Phase Resolved Spectroscopy of Burst Oscillations: Searching for Rotational Doppler Shifts

## Introduction

A rotating hot spot (or spots) seems to be the most simple, consistent scenario proposed to date to explain the presence of large amplitude modulations of the X-ray brightness during thermonuclear bursts. The presence of large amplitudes at burst onset combined with spectral evidence for localized X-ray emission supports this hypothesis szs . Additional evidence for spin modulation is provided by the fact that the oscillation frequencies are stable over year timescales and within bursts the oscillations are highly coherent s98b ; sm 

Detailed studies of the burst oscillations hold great promise for providing new insights into a variety of physics issues related to the structure and evolution of neutron stars. For example, within the context of the rotating hot spot model it is possible to determine constraints on the mass and radius of the neutron star from measurements of the maximum observed modulation amplitudes during X-ray bursts as well as the harmonic content of the pulses ml ; s98a . Phase resolved X-ray spectroscopy of the burst oscillations also holds great promise, and could yield methods to constrain the radii of neutron stars, a quantity which is extremely difficult to infer on its own. For example, a 10 km radius neutron star spinning at 400 Hz has a surface velocity of $`v_{spin}/c2\pi \nu _{spin}R/c0.084`$ at the rotational equator. This motion of the hot spot produces a Doppler shift of magnitude $`\mathrm{\Delta }E/Ev_{spin}/c`$, thus the observed spectrum is a function of pulse phase cs . Measurement of this phase dependent Doppler shift would provide further compelling evidence supporting the spin modulation model and also a means of constraining the neutron star radius, since for a known spin frequency the velocity, and thus magnitude of the Doppler shift, is proportional to the stellar radius. In addition, both the magnitude of the Doppler shift and the amplitude of spin modulation decrease as the lattitude of the hot spot increases (Both approaching zero when the spot is located at the rotational pole). Detection of this correlation in a large sample of bursts would provide definitive proof of the spin modulation hypothesis.

## Phase Resolved Spectroscopy

Detailed searches for a Doppler shift signature are just beginning to be carried out. Studies using the oscillations in single bursts have shown that 4-5 % modulations of the fitted black body temperature are easily detected in the tails of bursts ssz , and are consistent with the idea that a temperature gradient is present on the stellar surface, which when rotated produces the flux modulations. Phase lag studies in a burst from Aql X-1 indicates that softer photons lag higher energy photons in a manner which is qualitatively similar to that expected from a rotating hot spot ford .

There are several ways to address the issue of how best to search for Doppler shifts. Near burst onset the oscillation amplitude is high and the hot spot is well localized. If it were possible to examine the oscillations with exquisite detail nearer and nearer to the burst onset then the situation should approach that of a point-like hot spot on the star. A point spot located on the rotational equator produces the largest modulation amplitude as well as a maximal Doppler shift. Thus, in principle this would be an ideal interval to examine, however, the difficulty is that the burst flux is still weak near onset and the interval during which the spot is small (to accumulate a spectrum) is short. This means that the desired signal to examine is very weak. An alternative is to examine pulse trains in the decaying tails of bursts sm . In this case the oscillation interval is much longer, the burst flux is still substantial and there are many more photons available. However, the oscillation amplitude is lower and at late times in bursts we expect that a well localized spot is probably not present. More likely the modulations are caused by a broad temperature anisotropy over the stellar surface (see Figure 1. This means that the observed Doppler shift represents an integral over the rotating surface of the star, much of which is moving with a lower line of sight velocity than the maximum at the rotational equator. Thus the Doppler shift will be weaker than what we might expect near burst onset. To some extent the lack of signal in a single burst can be offset by summing data from several bursts coherently sm ; m .

## Results

To search for a Doppler shift I have examined the phase resolved spectrum of 4 bursts with 330 Hz oscillations from 4U 1702-429 mss . Intervals in the tails of these bursts were analysed first since these have much more signal in the pulsations than intervals near onset. For each burst I fit an exponential model of the frequency drift, as in sm , and then used the phase information for each X-ray event, based on the best model, to accumulate spectra in 12 phase bins. The data were recorded in an event mode which provides the arrival time and energy channel of each X-ray. The data mode has 64 energy channels in the $``$ 2 - 100 keV PCA band. As a measure of spectral hardness versus pulse phase I used the mean PCA energy bin for each phase interval. In principle one could also fit the accumulated spectra with a black body function and use the color temperature as a hardness measure, however, the spectra are accumulated over an interval long compared to the burst cooling time so that the spectra are not well fit by black body functions with a constant temperature. In each burst there is a strong modulation of the mean PCA energy channel with pulse phase, with the peak of the phase folded lightcurve having the highest mean channel. This result is similar to that found for oscillations at 580 Hz in a burst from 4U 1636-53 ssz , that is, the peak of the modulations are harder than the minima.

The single burst data show obvious modulations of the mean PCA channel with pulse phase, however, they do not show evidence for any asymmetry such as could be introduced by the rotational Doppler shift. This is mainly due to the lack of sufficient signal in a single burst. In an attempt to overcome these limitations I co-added the data for all 4 bursts in phase sm . This amounts to finding a phase offset, relative to one burst, which maximizes the pulsation signal of the sum. I then computed the mean PCA channel for the summed spectra in the same way as for the individual bursts. The results are given in figure 2. There is a strong 4 % modulation of the mean PCA channel in the combined data. As a simple test for asymmetry I fit a sine function to the mean PCA channel data and find that the data are adequately described by a simple sine wave, so we do not find any strong evidence for a Doppler shift in the combined data. It still remains to conduct more sophisticated tests for asymmetry on these data, and more bursts will be added as new data becomes available.