Disk vs wind accretion in X-ray pulsar GX 301-2

Abstract

GX 301-2 provides a rare opportunity to study both disk and wind accretion in a same target. We report Insight-HXMT observations of the spin-up event of GX 301-2 happened in 2019 and compare with those of wind-fed state. The pulse profiles of the initial rapid spin-up period are dominated by one main peak, while those of the later slow spin-up period are composed of two similar peaks, as those of wind-fed state. These behaviors are confirmed by Fermi/GBM data, which also show that during the rapid spin-up period, the main peak increases with luminosity up to $8\times 10^{37}$ erg s${}^{-1}$, but the faint peak keeps almost constant. The absorption column densities during the spin-up period are $\sim 1.5\times 10^{23}$ cm${}^{-2}$, much less than those of wind-fed state at similar luminosity ($\sim 9\times 10^{23}$ cm${}^{-2}$), supporting the scenario that most of material is condensed into a disk during the spin-up period. We discuss possible differences between disk and wind accretion that may explain the observed different trend of pulse profiles.

arXiv comment9 pages, 6 figs, to appear in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Pulsating iron spectral features in the emission of X-ray pulsar V0332+53
• Changes in the distribution of circum-binary material around the HMXB GX 301-2 during a rapid spin-up episode of the neutron star
• Evolution of eccentric high-mass X-ray binaries. The case of GX 301-2