On the spin-up/spin-down transitions in accreting X-ray binaries

Abstract

Accreting X-Ray Binaries display a wide range of behaviours. Some of them are observed to spin up steadily, others to alternate between spin-up and spin-down states, sometimes superimposed on a longer trend of either spin up or spin down. Here we interpret this rich phenomenology within a new model of the disk-magnetosphere interaction. Our model, based on the simplest version of a purely material torque, accounts for the fact that, when a neutron star is in the propeller regime, a fraction of the ejected material does not receive enough energy to completely unbind, and hence falls back into the disk. We show that the presence of this feedback mass component causes the occurrence of multiple states available to the system, for a given, constant value of the mass accretion rate dot{M}_* from the companion star. If the angle chi of the magnetic dipole axis with respect to the perpendicular to the disk is larger than a critical value chi_crit, the system eventually settles in a cycle of spin-up/spin-down transitions for a constant value of dot{M}_* and independent of the initial conditions. No external perturbations are required to induce the torque reversals. The transition from spin up to spin down is often accompanied by a large drop in luminosity. The frequency range spanned in each cycle and the timescale for torque reversals depend on dot{M}_*, the magnetic field of the star, the magnetic colatitude chi, and the degree of elasticity regulating the magnetosphere-disk interaction. The critical angle chi_crit ranges from \~25-30 deg for a completely elastic interaction to ~40-45 deg for a totally anelastic one. For chi ~< chi_crit, cycles are no longer possible and the long-term evolution of the system is a pure spin up. We specifically illustrate our model in the cases of the X-ray binaries GX 1+4 and 4U 1626-67.

37 pages, 11 figures, accepted to the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (11)

• Observations of Accreting Pulsars
• Spin-Up/Spin-Down of Magnetized Stars with Accretion Disks and Outflows
• The Propeller Regime of Disk Accretion to a Rapidly Rotating Magnetized Star
• Magnetically Driven Warping, Precession and Resonances in Accretion Disks
• Magnetically Driven Accretion Flows in the Kerr Metric IV: Dynamical Properties of the Inner Disk
• The Symbiotic Neutron Star Binary GX 1+4/V2116 Ophiuchi
• On the Correlation of Torque and Luminosity in GX 1+4
• On the bolometric quiescent luminosity and luminosity swing of black hole candidate and neutron star low mass X-ray transients
• The transient X-ray pulsar 4U 0115+63 from quiescence to outburst through the centrifugal transition
• Warping of Accretion Disks with Magnetically Driven Outflows: A Possible Origin for Jet Precession
• Where Are All The Fallback Disks? Constraints on Propeller Systems

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