Pressure Balance and Intrabinary Shock Stability in Rotation-Powered State Redback and Transitional Millisecond Pulsar Binary Systems

Abstract

A number of low-mass millisecond pulsar (MSP) binaries in their rotation-powered state exhibit double-peaked X-ray orbital modulation centered at inferior pulsar conjunction. This state, which has been known to persist for years, has recently been interpreted as emission from a shock that enshrouds the pulsar. However, the pressure balance for such a configuration is a crucial unresolved issue. We consider two scenarios for pressure balance: a companion magnetosphere and stellar mass loss with gas dominance. It is found that the magnetospheric scenario requires several kilogauss poloidal fields for isobaric surfaces to enshroud the MSP as well as for the magnetosphere to remain stable if there is significant mass loss. For the gas-dominated scenario, it is necessary that the companion wind loses angular momentum prolifically as an advection or heating-dominated flow. Thermal bremsstrahlung cooling in the flow may be observable as a UV to soft X-ray component independent of orbital phase if the mass rate is high. We formulate the general requirements for shock stability against gravitational influences in the pulsar rotation-powered state for the gas-dominated scenario. We explore stabilizing mechanisms, principally irradiation feedback, which anticipates correlated shock emission and companion variability and predicts $F_{\gamma }/F_{\mathrm{X}}\lesssim 14$ for the ratio of pulsar magnetospheric $\gamma$-ray to total shock soft-to-hard X-ray fluxes. This stability criterion implies an unbroken extension of X-ray power-law emission to hundreds of keV for some systems. We explore observational discriminants between the gas-dominated and magnetospheric scenarios, motivating contemporaneous radio through $\gamma$-ray monitoring of these systems.

Accepted to ApJ; 31 pages, 9 figures; comments welcome

References in corpus (39)

• The Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) Project
• The NANOGrav 11-year Data Set: High-precision timing of 45 Millisecond Pulsars
• A Radio Pulsar/X-ray Binary Link
• The Magnetic Fields of Classical T Tauri Stars
• Discovery of PSR J1227-4853: A transition from a low-mass X-ray binary to a redback millisecond pulsar
• Intra-Binary Shock Heating of Black Widow Companions
• X-ray Variability and Evidence for Pulsations from the Unique Radio Pulsar/X-ray Binary Transition Object FIRST J102347.6+003841
• The spin axes orbital alignment of both stars within the eclipsing binary system V1143Cyg using the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect
• X-ray states of redback millisecond pulsars
• Constraints on the Emission Geometries and Spin Evolution of Gamma-ray Millisecond Pulsars
• Pulsar emission amplified and resolved by plasma lensing in an eclipsing binary
• Timing Observations of PSR J1023+0038 During a Low-Mass X-ray Binary State
• Constraining Relativistic Bow Shock Properties in Rotation-Powered Millisecond Pulsar Binaries
• General-Relativistic Simulations of Four States of Accretion onto Millisecond Pulsars
• NuSTAR Observations of the State Transition of Millisecond Pulsar Binary PSR J1023+0038
• The nature of very faint X-ray binaries; hints from light curves
• Gamma-ray Timing of Redback PSR J2339-0533: Hints for Gravitational Quadrupole Moment Changes
• Multiwavelength Observations of the Redback Millisecond Pulsar J1048+2339
• 21-year timing of the black-widow pulsar J2051-0827
• The Low-Frequency Radio Eclipses of the Black Widow Pulsar J1810+1744
• B-ducted Heating of Black Widow Companions
• First nonlinear force-free field extrapolations of SOLIS/VSM data
• Cosmic-ray positrons from millisecond pulsars
• Irradiation of Astrophysical Objects - SED and Flux Effects on Thermally Driven Winds
• An active, asynchronous companion to a redback millisecond pulsar
• Population syntheses of millisecond pulsars from the Galactic Disk and Bulge
• Search for transitions between states in redbacks and black widows using seven years of Fermi-LAT observations
• Low-radio-frequency eclipses of the redback pulsar J2215+5135 observed in the image plane with LOFAR
• Plasma Beta Stratification in the Solar Atmosphere: A Possible Explanation for the Penumbra Formation
• A Likely Redback Millisecond Pulsar Counterpart of 3FGL J0838.8-2829
• The Quasi-Roche lobe overflow state in the evolution of Close Binary Systems containing a radio pulsar
• Exploring the intrabinary shock from the redback millisecond pulsar PSR J2129-0429
• Shock structures of astrospheres
• Radiation from an off-centred rotating dipole in vacuum
• Toward understanding the physical underpinnings of spatial and spectral morphologies of pulsar wind nebulae
• Relativistic Shear Flow Between Electron-Ion and Electron-Positron Plasmas and Astrophysical Applications
• A NuSTAR Observation of the Gamma-ray Emitting Millisecond Pulsar PSR J1723-2837
• The effect of an offset polar cap dipolar magnetic field on the modeling of the Vela pulsar's $\gamma$-ray light curves
• Broadband High-Energy Emissions of the Redback Millisecond Pulsar PSR J2129-0429

Cited by in corpus (29)

• Periodicity in recurrent fast radio bursts and the origin of ultra long period magnetars
• Transitional millisecond pulsars
• Einstein@Home Discovery of the Gamma-ray Millisecond Pulsar PSR J2039-5617 Confirms Its Predicted Redback Nature
• Long Term Variability of a Black Widow's Eclipses -- A Decade of PSR J2051$-$0827
• X-ray Through Very-High-Energy Intrabinary Shock Emission from Black Widows and Redbacks
• A New Flaring Black Widow Candidate and Demographics of Black Widow Millisecond Pulsars in the Galactic Field
• Sporadic radio pulses from a white dwarf binary at the orbital period
• A Census of X-ray Millisecond Pulsars in Globular Clusters
• NICER Discovery of Millisecond X-ray Pulsations and an Ultracompact Orbit in IGR J17494-3030
• A Deep Chandra X-ray Observatory Study of the Millisecond Pulsar Population in the Globular Cluster Terzan 5
• The GBT 350-MHz Drift Scan Pulsar Survey. III. Detection of a magnetic field in the eclipsing material of PSR J2256-1024
• Discovery of a New Redback Millisecond Pulsar Candidate: 4FGL J0940.3-7610
• The MAVERIC survey: A hidden pulsar and a black hole candidate in ATCA radio imaging of the globular cluster NGC 6397
• Radio pulsations from the $\gamma$-ray millisecond pulsar PSR J2039-5617
• The MAVERIC Survey: New compact binaries revealed by deep radio continuum observations of the Galactic globular cluster Terzan 5
• The Emission Physics of Millisecond Pulsars
• Gamma-ray Eclipses and Orbital Modulation Transitions in the Candidate Redback 4FGL J1702.7-5655
• A deep Chandra survey for faint X-ray sources in the Galactic globular cluster M30, and searches for optical and radio counterparts
• NuSTAR and Parkes observations of the transitional millisecond pulsar binary XSS J12270-4859 in the rotation-powered state
• The neutron star population in M28: a joint Chandra/GBT look at pulsar paradise
• Physical modeling of viscous disc evolution around magnetized neutron star. Aql X-1 2013 outburst decay
• On the vanishing orbital X-ray variability of the eclipsing binary millisecond pulsar 47 Tuc W
• Evidence of intra-binary shock emission from the redback pulsar PSR J1048+2339
• Reciprocating Magnetic Fields in the Pulsar Wind Observed from the Black Widow Pulsar J1720-0534
• COBIPULSE: A Systematic Search for Compact Binary Millisecond Pulsars
• Convective dynamos of black widow companions
• Hydrodynamical simulations of wind interaction in spider systems : A step toward understanding transitional millisecond pulsars
• Very high-energy gamma-ray and neutrino emission from hadronic interaction in compact binary millisecond pulsars
• Global Kinetic Modeling of the Intrabinary Shock in Spider Pulsars