Disc Instabilities in Soft X-ray Transients
| dc.creator | King, A. R. | |
| dc.date | 2001-08-22 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T01:59:43Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T01:59:43Z | |
| dc.description | I briefly review the theory of soft X-ray transient systems. Irradiation of the accretion disc faces by the central X-ray source determines both the occurrence and the nature of the outbursts, in particular forcing these to be long viscous events and producing exponential decays at short orbital periods. Soft X-ray transients constitute the majority of LMXBs, persistent systems being largely confined to a subset of neutron-star LMXBs with periods P < 2 d. It appears that LMXBs very frequently contain nuclear-evolved companions, even at short orbital periods. In long-period transients (P > 20 d) the outburst recurrence times must become extremely long (> 1500 yr). The outbursts are highly super-Eddington, markedly reducing the accretion efficiency. Spinup of a neutron-star primary to millisecond periods probably cannot occur for orbital periods > 200 d, in agreement with observations of binary pulsars. | |
| dc.description | 5 pages, no figures; to appear in the Proceedings of the Jan van Paradijs Memorial Symposium, Amsterdam, June 2001 | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0108364 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0108364 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/3229 | |
| dc.subject | Astrophysics | |
| dc.title | Disc Instabilities in Soft X-ray Transients | |
| dc.type | text |