Optical observations of Sco X-1 with exposure times around 0.5 s were performed with the 1.56 m telescope of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in 2008.With these observations,we studied the fluctuation of the optical flux on three short timescales(5,10,100 s).We found that the standard deviations of fluctuations on these three timescales differ from those of Gaussian distributions by 7 Sigma,5 Sigma and 3 Sigma,respectively.The result suggests that the variations in the intensity on these short timescales differ from pure statistical fluctuations,which,we suggest,is due to the intrinsic variability in the optical emission.
CAO XiaoFeng1,2,YU WenFei1,YAN Zhen1 & SUN Li1 1 Shanghai Astronomical Observatory,Shanghai 200030,China
Employing phenomenological density-dependent critical temperatures of strong singlet-state proton pairing and of moderate triplet-state neutron pairing, we investigate the effects of rotochemical heating on the thermal evolution of superfluid neutron stars whose cores consist of npe matter with the Akmal-Pandharipande-Ravenhall equation of state. Since the star is not quite in the weak interaction equilibrium state during spin-down, the departure from the chemical equilibrium leads to the rotochemical heating in a rotating NS which will increase the stellar＇s temperature. Our calculations show that the rotochemical heating delays the cooling of superfluid neutron stars considerably and makes the previous classification of NS cooling ambiguous. What＇s more, our model is currently consistent with all the observational data, and in particular some middle-aged and cold NSs （PRS J0205＋6449 in 3C 58, PRS J1357-6429, RX J007.0＋7303 in CTA 1, Vela） can be better explained when taking into account rotochemical heating.
