Physical Properties of the AXP 4U 0142+61 from X-ray Spectral Analysis

Abstract

We analyze archival Chandra and XMM-Newton data of 4U 0142+61 within the context of the Surface Thermal Emission and Magnetospheric Scattering model. We show that 4U 0142+61 spectrum can be fit very well with this physical model that contains only four parameters. The system parameters can be tightly constrained from the fits, yielding a surface magnetic field strength of B=(4.75 \pm 0.02)x 10^{14} G, a surface temperature of kT = 0.309 \pm 0.001$keVandascatteringopticaldepthofafewinthemagnetosphere.Thesevaluesdonotvarybetweenobservationsduetothestabilityofthesourcewithinthewindowoftheobservations.Thedetailedfitsyield$χ^2$ values that are statistically much better than the traditionally employed blackbody+power-law and two blackbody fits. The spectroscopically measured surface magnetic field strength is higher than, but within, the theoretical uncertainties of the value inferred from the dipole spindown formula.

Replaced with the accepted version

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• X-ray spectra from magnetar candidates. I. Monte Carlo simulations in the non-relativistic regime
• Resonant cyclotron scattering in magnetars' emission
• Detailed high-energy characteristics of AXP 4U 0142+61 - Multi-year observations with INTEGRAL, RXTE, XMM-Newton and ASCA