A propeller model for the sub-luminous disk state of the transitional millisecond pulsar PSR J1023+0038

Abstract

The discovery of millisecond pulsars switching between states powered either by the rotation of their magnetic field or by the accretion of matter, has recently proved the tight link shared by millisecond radio pulsars and neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries. Transitional millisecond pulsars also show an enigmatic intermediate state in which the neutron star is surrounded by an accretion disk, it emits coherent X-ray pulsations, but is sub-luminous in X-rays with respect to accreting neutron stars, and is brighter in gamma-rays than millisecond pulsars in the rotation-powered state. Here, we model the X-ray and gamma-ray emission observed from PSR J1023+0038 in such a state based on the assumption that most of the disk in-flow is propelled away by the rapidly rotating neutron star magnetosphere, and that electrons can be accelerated to energies of a few GeV at the turbulent disk-magnetosphere boundary. We show that the synchrotron and self-synchrotron Compton emission coming from such a region, together with the hard disk emission typical of low states of accreting compact objects, is able to explain the radiation observed in the X-ray and gamma-ray band. The average emission observed from PSR J1023+0038 is modelled by a disk in-flow with a rate of $(1-3)\times 10^{-11}{M}_{\odot }/yr$, truncated at a radius ranging between 30 and 45 km, compatible with the hypothesis of a propelling magnetosphere. We compare the results we obtained with models that rather assume that a rotation-powered pulsar is turned on, showing how the spin down power released in similar scenarios is hardly able to account for the magnitude of the observed emission.

arXiv comment10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in ApJ. A few typos corrected

References in corpus (5)

• Fermi Large Area Telescope First Source Catalog
• Identification of the High-Energy Gamma-Ray Source 3FGL J1544.6-1125 as a Transitional Millisecond Pulsar Binary in an Accreting State
• Long-Term Radio Timing Observations of the Transition Millisecond Pulsar PSR~J1023+0038
• Accretion-powered pulsations in an apparently quiescent neutron star binary
• Coordinated X-ray, Ultraviolet, Optical, and Radio Observations of the PSR J1023+0038 System in a Low-mass X-ray Binary State

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Accreting pulsars: mixing-up accretion phases in transitional systems
• The MAVERIC Survey: Simultaneous Chandra and VLA observations of the transitional millisecond pulsar candidate NGC 6652B
• The INTEGRAL view of the pulsating hard X-ray sky: from accreting and transitional millisecond pulsars to rotation-powered pulsars and magnetars