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Wide band observations of the X-ray burster GS 1826-238

GS 1826-238 is a well-studied X-ray bursting neutron star in a low mass binary system. Thermal Comptonisation by a hot electron cloud is a widely accepted mechanism accounting for its high energy emission, while the nature of most of its soft X-ray output is not completely understood. A further low energy component is typically needed to model the observed spectra: pure blackbody and Comptonisation-modified blackbody radiation by a lower temperature (a few keV) electron plasma were suggested to explain the low energy data. We studied the steady emission of GS 1826-238 by means of broad band (X to soft Gamma-rays) measurements obtained by the INTEGRAL observatory in 2003 and 2006. The newly developed, up-to-date Comptonisation model CompTB is applied for the first time to study effectively the low-hard state variability of a low-luminosity neutron star in a low-mass X-ray binary system. We confirm that the 3-200 keV emission of \GS is characterised by Comptonisation of soft seed photons by a hot electron plasma. A single spectral component is sufficient to model the observed spectra. At lower energies, no direct blackbody emission is observed and there is no need to postulate a low temperature Compton region. Compared to the 2003 measurements, the plasma temperature decreased from 20 to 14 keV in 2006, together with the seed photons temperature. The source intensity was also found to be 30% lower in 2006, whilst the average recurrence frequency of the X-ray bursts significantly increased. Possible explanations for this apparent deviation from the typical limit-cycle behaviour of this burster are discussed.