Fluctuation analysis of stellar x-ray binary systems

We study time series of x-ray sources of 129 stellar binary systems present in the public data collected by the instrument All Sky Monitor on board of the satellite Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer. The light time series was analyzed by applying detrended fluctuation analysis to estimate the long-range power-law correlation exponents alpha. The scaling exponent was calculated for all systems and its value indicated a signature of each kind of system, i.e., whether flare takes place (with alpha=1.22) or not (with alpha=0.64). As a consequence, our results may identify the stability of the systems from the scaling exponent alpha value, for instance, if alpha approximately 0.5 (white noise) the system is stable and unstable when alpha not equal to 0.5 (long-range power-law correlation).