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Vincentelli FM, Neilsen J, Tetarenko AJ, Cavecchi Y, Castro Segura N, Del Palacio S, van den Eijnden J, Vasilopoulos G, Altamirano D, Armas Padilla M, Bailyn CD, Belloni T, Buisson DJK, Cúneo VA, Degenaar N, Knigge C, Long KS, Jiménez-Ibarra F, Milburn J, Muñoz Darias T, Özbey Arabacı M, Remillard R, Russell T. A shared accretion instability for black holes and neutron stars. Nature 2023; 615:45-49. [PMID: 36859580 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05648-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/17/2022] [Accepted: 12/12/2022] [Indexed: 03/03/2023]
Abstract
Accretion disks around compact objects are expected to enter an unstable phase at high luminosity1. One instability may occur when the radiation pressure generated by accretion modifies the disk viscosity, resulting in the cyclic depletion and refilling of the inner disk on short timescales2. Such a scenario, however, has only been quantitatively verified for a single stellar-mass black hole3-5. Although there are hints of these cycles in a few isolated cases6-10, their apparent absence in the variable emission of most bright accreting neutron stars and black holes has been a continuing puzzle11. Here we report the presence of the same multiwavelength instability around an accreting neutron star. Moreover, we show that the variability across the electromagnetic spectrum-from radio to X-ray-of both black holes and neutron stars at high accretion rates can be explained consistently if the accretion disks are unstable, producing relativistic ejections during transitions that deplete or refill the inner disk. Such a new association allows us to identify the main physical components responsible for the fast multiwavelength variability of highly accreting compact objects.
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Affiliation(s)
- F M Vincentelli
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
- Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
- Department of Physics, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA.
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.
| | - J Neilsen
- Department of Physics, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA
| | - A J Tetarenko
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA
| | - Y Cavecchi
- Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, Mexico
- Departament de Física, EEBE, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
| | - N Castro Segura
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
| | - S Del Palacio
- Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
| | - J van den Eijnden
- Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - G Vasilopoulos
- Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
- Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg, UMR 7550, Strasbourg, France
| | - D Altamirano
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
| | - M Armas Padilla
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
- Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
| | - C D Bailyn
- Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - T Belloni
- INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Merate, Italy
| | - D J K Buisson
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
| | - V A Cúneo
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
- Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
| | - N Degenaar
- Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - C Knigge
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
| | - K S Long
- Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA
- Eureka Scientific, Inc., Oakland, CA, USA
| | - F Jiménez-Ibarra
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
- Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
| | - J Milburn
- Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
| | - T Muñoz Darias
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
- Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
| | - M Özbey Arabacı
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
| | - R Remillard
- MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - T Russell
- INAF, Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica, Palermo, Italy
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