Past Colloquia
Highlights of transient phenomena obtained by MAXI

Title: Highlights of transient phenomena obtained by MAXI

Speaker: Masaru Matsuoka (JAXA, Riken, Japan)

Time & Place: Thursday, 3.00pm, May 16th, Lecture Hall, 3rd floor

Abstract: MAXI is a Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image on Japanese Experimental Module of International Space Station. It has observed X-ray variability of thousands-X-ray objects since August, 2009. MAXI has discovered 10 new X-ray transients and novae, and six of them were black hole candidates.  It has also detected more than 30 new soft GRBs. The six black hole candidates revealed typical or atypical light curves in considerable lower level. MAXI discovered a flash from tidal disruption of a star in normal galaxy cooperating with Swift. It was like a long GRB, but it is still sometimes detected by Fermi gamma-ray detector. MAXI detected also a short flash from a nova with white dwarf in SMC. The detailed analysis suggested that this nova have a heavy white dwarf near Chandrasekhar limit. MAXI detected a super X-ray burst caused probably an accompanying outburst from NS-LMXB. MAXI is monitoring Be-binary X-ray pulsars, and consequently detected 42 outbursts from 14 X-ray pulsars, in which we detected aperiodic phenomena, sometimes revealing a long-time precession period. MAXI detected a lot of stellar flares with unbiased all sky observations. Consequently, we have proposed that the origin of GRXE is explained by a composite X-rays consisting of large and faint stellar flares and cataclysmic variables. Finally, soft X-ray monitor MAXI/SSC obtained a probable hyper-nova remnant in Cygnus constellation which occurred 3 million years ago with energy of 10^{53~54} ergs 

 
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