A Comprehensive Study of Thermonuclear X-ray Bursts from 4U 1820-30 with NICER: Accretion Disk Interactions and a Candidate Burst Oscillation

Abstract: We present the results obtained from timing and spectral studies of 15 thermonuclear X-ray bursts from 4U 1820-30 observed with the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) during its five years of observations between 2017-2022. All bursts showed clear signs of photospheric radius expansion, where the neutron star (NS) photosphere expanded more than 50 km above the surface. One of the bursts produced a super-expansion with a blackbody emission radius of 902 km for the first time with NICER. We searched for burst oscillations in all 15 bursts and found evidence of a coherent oscillation at 716 Hz in a burst, with a 2.9$\sigma$ detection level based on Monte Carlo simulations. If confirmed with future observations, 4U 1820-30 would become the fastest-spinning NS known in X-ray binary systems. The fractional rms amplitude of the candidate burst oscillation was found to be 5.8% in the energy range of 3-10 keV. Following the variable persistent model from burst time-resolved spectroscopy, an anti-correlation is seen between the maximum scaling factor value and the (pre-burst) persistent flux. We detected a low value of ionization at the peak of each burst based on reflection modeling of burst spectra. A partially interacting inner accretion disk or a weakly ionized outer disk may cause the observed ionization dip during the photospheric radius expansion phase.