Detection of millihertz quasi-periodic oscillations in the low-mass X-ray binary 4U 1730-22 with NICER

Abstract

We report the discovery of millihertz quasi-periodic oscillations (mHz QPOs) from the neutron star (NS) low-mass X-ray binary 4U 1730-22 using the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER). After being inactive for almost 50 years, 4U 1730-22 went into outburst twice between June and August 2021, and between February and July 2022. We analyse all the NICER observations of this source, and detect mHz QPOs with a significance > 4 σ in 35 observations. The QPO frequency of the full data set ranged between ∼4.5 and ∼8.1 mHz with an average fractional rms amplitude of the order of ∼2 per cent. The X-ray colour analysis strongly suggests that 4U 1730-22 was in a soft spectral state during the QPO detections. Our findings are consistent with those reported for other sources where the mHz QPOs have been interpreted as the result of a special mode of He burning on the NS surface called marginally stable nuclear burning (MSNB). We conclude that the mHz QPOs reported in this work are also associated with the MSNB, making 4U 1730-22 the eighth source that shows this phenomenology. We discuss our findings in the context of the heat flux from the NS crust.