Possible regular phenomena in EXO 2030+375

¹ Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, University of Tübingen, Sand 1, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
e-mail: laplace@astro.uni-tuebingen.de
² MAXI team, RIKEN, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, 351-0198 Saitama, Japan
e-mail: tmihara@riken.jp
³ Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (WPI), The University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Study, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, 277-8583 Chiba, Japan
⁴ School of Dentistry at Matsudo, Nihon University, 2-870-1, Sakaecho-nishi, Matsudo, 271-8587 Chiba, Japan

Received: 22 July 2016
Accepted: 12 September 2016

Abstract

In the last 10 yr, since its last giant outburst in 2006, regular X-ray outbursts (type I) were detected every periastron passage in the Be X-ray binary EXO 2030+375. Recently, however, it was reported that the source started to show a peculiar behavior: its X-ray flux decreased significantly and type I outbursts were missed in several cases. At the same time, the spin frequency of the neutron star, which had been increasing steadily since the end of the 2006 giant outburst, reached a plateau. Very recent observations indicate that the source is now starting to spin down. These observed phenomena have a striking similarity with those which took place 21 yr ago, just before the source displayed a sudden orbital phase shift of the outburst peak (1995). This historical event occurred at the time exactly between the two giant outbursts (1985 and 2006). These phenomena suggest the system to have an underlying periodicity of 10.5 yr between orbital phase shifts and/or giant outbursts. The suggested periodicity may reflect some long-period dynamics in the circumstellar disk of the Be star, due, e.g., to the Kozai-Lidov effect. A model generating such a periodic change of the Be disk, namely Kozai-Lidov oscillations in the Be disk, is discussed. If this behavior is really periodical, another phase shift of the X-ray outburst peak is predicted to occur around 2016 December.