An origin for the main pulsation and overtones of SGR1900+14 during the August 27 (1998) superoutburst

Abstract

The crucial observation on the occurrence of subpulses (overtones) in the Power Spectral Density of the August 27 (1998) event from SGR1900+14, as discovered by BeppoSAX (Feroci et al. 1999), has received no consistent explanation in the context of the competing theories to explain the SGRs phenomenology: the magnetar and accretion-driven models. Based on the ultra-relativistic, ultracompact X-ray binary model introduced in the accompanying paper (Mosquera Cuesta 2004a), I present here a self-consistent explanation for such an striking feature. I suggest that both the fundamental mode and the overtones observed in SGR1900+14 stem from pulsations of a massive white dwarf (WD). The fundamental mode (and likely some of its harmonics) is excited because of the mutual gravitational interaction with its orbital companion (a NS, envisioned here as point mass object) whenever the binary Keplerian orbital frequency is a multiple integer number ($m$) of that mode frequency (Pons et al. 2002). Besides, a large part of the powerful irradiation from the fireball-like explosion occurring on the NS (after partial accretion of disk material) is absorbed in different regions of the star driving the excitation of other multipoles (Podsiadlowski 1991,1995), i.e., the overtones (fluid modes of higher frequency). Part of this energy is then reemitted into space from the WD surface or atmosphere. This way, the WD lightcurve carries with it the signature of these pulsations inasmuch the way as it happens with the Sun pulsations in Helioseismology. It is shown that our theoretical prediction on the pulsation spectrum agrees quite well with the one found by BeppoSAX (Feroci et al. 1999). A feature confirmed by numerical simulations (Montgomery & Winget 2000).