Abstract
The Rapid Burster is a unique X-ray source which produces rapidly repetitive X-ray bursts. Each rapid burst shows a characteristic structure in its decay part comprising successive peaks. We have now discovered that the structure of each individual burst shows a nearly identical profile except for the timescale, which differs largely from burst to burst; the profile of the decay is timescale invariant. This invariance holds over a wide range of timescales to at least a factor of 30. Furthermore, we have found that the heights of successive peaks as well as the intervals between them decrease with time according to a common arithmetic rule.
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Tawara, Y., Kawai, N., Tanaka, Y. et al. Timescale-invariant profile of the type II bursts from the Rapid Burster. Nature 318, 545–547 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/318545a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/318545a0
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