Work

A low mass and radius neutron star candidate in XTE J1810−189?

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: ABSTRACT Photospheric radius expansion (PRE) bursts provide a crucial tool for constraining the mass and radius of neutron stars. In this study, we analyse time-resolved spectroscopic data from XTE J1810−189 in 2008, which exhibit evidence of a PRE event. We report here the possibility of a small-sized and low-mass neutron star in XTE J1810−189 with the use of the advantage of the direct cooling tail method. We obtained three sets of results, which can be broadly divided into high metal abundance (20 and 40 $\rm {Z}_{\odot }$), low metal abundance and hydrogen-rich (pure hydrogen, $\rm {Z}_{\odot }$, 0.3, 0.1, and 0.01 $\rm {Z}_{\odot }$), and pure helium. In the high-metallicity scenario, the inferred neutron star mass is ${\lt} 1.3\, {\rm M}_{\odot }$ with a radius ${\lt} 8\, \rm {km}$. In the low-metallicity, hydrogen-rich case, the mass ranges from 0.3 to 2.1 ${\rm M}_{\odot }$ with radii of 7–13 km. For a pure-helium composition, we find two mass solutions: $1.08_{-0.22}^{+1.32} \, {\rm M}_{\odot }$ (with $R \gt 14\, \rm {km}$) and $2.5\!-\!2.9\, {\rm M}_{\odot }$ (above the highest observed neutron star masses). Additionally, we applied the touchdown method combined with a Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis, and the results are consistent with those from the direct cooling tail method, but with a broader range. Our analysis of the time-resolved spectrum of the burst suggests a high-metallicity atmosphere, but new observations are required to confirm this result.

Source: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stag516