Time-resolved photometry of X-ray binaries with NASA's TESS spacecraft.

This work entails a time-series photometric analysis of X-ray binary stars. We have used observations from NASA’s TESS spacecraft. We have calculated the light-curves & Lomb-Scargle periodograms for both high-mass & low-mass X-ray binaries (20 objects in 4 catalogs). We have used Peranso for plotting light curves & their periodograms for all sectors of TESS observed at 2-min cadence. The periodogram peaks probably show pulsations of the compact object or the object’s orbital period. Many objects in our catalogs match with their orbital periods calculated from visible spectroscopy or radial velocity studies as mentioned in literature. Using this technique, we found multiple periodicities & the most prominent periods with their corresponding epochs have been tabulated.

We find periodic behavior in the brightness of 19 of the 20 stars. The photometric periods we measure for these stars are 6.37 days for Swift J0243.6+612, 1.08 days for HESS J0632+057, 4.4 hours for IGR J11305-6256, 3.13 days for PSR B1259-63, 3.63 days for IGR J16327-4940, 0.96 days for AX J1700.2-4220, 1.22 hr for 4U 1954+31, 6.2 days for PSR J2032+4127 and 1.32 days for HD 215227 for 9 stars in Neumann et. al (2023). From the 8 stars in Liu et. al (2007), the previously unobserved periods are 7.55 hours for 4U 1456-32, 15.96 days for 4U 1700+24, 6.42 hours for 4U 1908+005, 3.23 days for GS 2023+338 and 5.32 days for Cyg X-2. From Avakyan et. al (2023), IGR J17353-3539 is the only star we found. It has a period of 5.43 days.