A deep campaign to characterize the synchronous radio/X-ray mode switching of PSR B0943+10

Abstract

We report on simultaneous X-ray and radio observations of the mode-switching pulsar PSR B0943+10 obtained with the XMM-Newton satellite and the LOFAR, LWA and Arecibo radio telescopes in November 2014. We confirm the synchronous X-ray/radio switching between a radio-bright (B) and a radio-quiet (Q) mode, in which the X-ray flux is a factor ~2.4 higher than in the B-mode. We discovered X-ray pulsations, with pulsed fraction of 38+/-5% (0.5-2 keV), during the B-mode, and confirm their presence in Q-mode, where the pulsed fraction increases with energy from ~20% up to ~65% at 2 keV. We found marginal evidence for an increase in the X-ray pulsed fraction during B-mode on a timescale of hours. The Q-mode X-ray spectrum requires a fit with a two-component model (either a power-law plus blackbody or the sum of two blackbodies), while the B-mode spectrum is well fit by a single blackbody (a single power-law is rejected). With a maximum likelihood analysis, we found that in Q-mode the pulsed emission has a thermal blackbody spectrum with temperature ~3.4x10^6 K and the unpulsed emission is a power-law with photon index ~2.5, while during B-mode both the pulsed and unpulsed emission can be fit by either a blackbody or a power law with similar values of temperature and photon index. A Chandra image shows no evidence for diffuse X-ray emission. These results support a scenario in which both unpulsed non-thermal emission, likely of magnetospheric origin, and pulsed thermal emission from a small polar cap (~1500 m^2) with a strong non-dipolar magnetic field (~10^{14} G), are present during both radio modes and vary in intensity in a correlated way. This is broadly consistent with the predictions of the partially screened gap model and does not necessarily imply global magnetospheric rearrangements to explain the mode switching.

arXiv commentTo be published on The Astrophysical Journal

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