Discovery of kHz Fluctuations in Centaurus X-3: Evidence for Photon Bubble Oscillations (PBO) and Turbulence in a High Mass X-ray Binary Pulsar (original) (raw)

We report the discovery of kHz fluctuations, including quasi-periodic oscillations (QPO) at ∼ 330 Hz (260−407 Hz) and ∼ 760 Hz (671−849 Hz) and a broadband kHz continuum in the power density spectrum of the high mass X-ray binary pulsar Centaurus X-3 (Jernigan, Klein and Arons 1999). These observations of Cen X-3 were carried out with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). The fluctuation spectrum is flat from mHz to a few Hz, then steepens to f −2 behavior between a few Hz and ∼ 100 Hz. Above a hundred Hz, corrections for the observations of Cen X-3, we have also demonstrated that the black hole Cyg X-1 shows clear evidence of variability up to a frequency of ∼ 280 Hz. Also observations of GX 17+2 were used to validate the procedure for deadtime corrections. This analysis of GX 17+2 clearly indicates the presence of a kHz QPO and the absence of any significant simultaneous kHz continuum.