2004ApJ...612.1018R

We report on RXTE observations of the microquasar XTE J1550-564 during a ∼70 day outburst in 2000 April-June. We focus here on the temporal properties of the source and study the behavior of low-frequency (0.1-10 Hz) quasi-periodic oscillations (LFQPOs), which seem to be of different types. We focus on the so-called type C (according to the classification of Remillard and collaborators), which corresponds to a strong 0.1-6 Hz LFQPO found to be present during at least 17 observations. We find that the frequency of the QPO is better correlated with the soft X-ray (≤7 keV) flux than with the hard flux (≥7 keV). If soft X-rays represent the behavior of an accretion disk, the relation shows that the disk may set the LFQPO frequency. In two cases, the identification of the type of QPO is not straightforward. If the QPOs in those two cases are type A (or B), then we may be seeing the QPO type alternate between type C and type A (or B), and this may represent some rapid changes in the physical properties of the accretion flow before the system stabilizes and slowly decays toward the end of the outburst. On the other hand, if all the QPOs are of type C, we may be observing an inversion in the frequency versus flux relation similar to that seen in GRO J1655-40. We discuss the QPO behavior in the framework of theoretical models.