Caption: Evolution of 4U 1820-30 superorbital phases from 1987 to 2023. The dotted, solid and dashed lines represent the best fits for linear, glitch and quadratic models, respectively. The shaded area indicates the low power state between MJD 50,773 and 52,627, and the vertical dash-dot line represents the period glitch time MJD 52,380±4145, evaluated by the glitch model, with the horizontal error bar indicating the 1σ uncertainty of the glitch time.
Master student Jun-Lei Wu and Prof. Yi Chou studied the superorbital modulation of low mass X-ray binary 4U 1820-30.It was long believed by the astronomers that the superorbital modulation of the low-mass X-ray binary 4U 1820-30, with a period of 171 days, was a resonance effect induced by a third star orbiting the binary system—an explanation known as the triple model. The stability of this superorbital period predicted by this model is crucial for verifying this hypothesis. A research team led by Prof. Yi Chou analyzed X-ray light curves collected by six monitoring and scanning telescopes over a span of 36 years. They discovered that the superorbital period had significantly changed from 171 days to 167 days during this time. Further phase analysis revealed that this change either occurred abruptly between early 2001 and mid-2003 or evolved gradually with a period derivative of Ṗ=(-4.20±0.72)x10-4 day/day. Their findings indicate that the superorbital period of 4U 1820-30 is not as stable as predicted by the triple model, strongly challenging this hypothesis. Instead, they propose an irradiation-induced mass transfer instability scenario to explain the observed superorbital modulation. The research paper has been published in the Astrophysical Journal (
Yi Chou et al. 2025 ApJ 981 43
). Its preprint, posted on arXiv in September 2024, was reported on the renowned public outreach website Phys.org under the title
"Study Inspects Unusual Behavior of an X-ray Binary"
.
