Exploration of the $\ps-\pb$ Relation for Wind-Fed X-Ray Pulsars

Abstract

We have investigated the relation between the orbital periods ($\pb$) and the spin periods ($\ps$) of wind-fed X-ray pulsars in high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs), based on population synthesis calculations of the spin evolution of neutron stars during the pre-HMXB stage. We show that most of the neutron stars either have steady accretion or still reside in the radio pulsar phase when the donor star starts evolving off the main sequence. In the former case the values of $\ps$ can be decelerated to be $\sim 10^2-10^3$ s depending on $\pb$. We briefly discuss the possible origin of the $\ps-\pb$ correlation in Be/X-ray binaries, and the existence of HMXBs with main sequence donors. We have also investigated the evolution of the inclination angle between the magnetic and spin axes of neutron stars in a massive binary, suggesting secular alignment of the magnetic and spin axes during their evolution.

18 pages,5 figures, accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (1)

• Further evidence for the presence of a neutron star in 4U 2206+54. INTEGRAL and VLA observations

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Populating the Galaxy with pulsars I: stellar & binary evolution
• Discovery of slow X-ray pulsations in the high-mass X-ray binary 4U 2206+54
• On the Spin Period Distribution in Be/X-ray Binaries
• On the Common Envelope Efficiency
• X-ray luminosity function of high-mass X-ray binaries: Studying the signatures of different physical processes using detailed binary evolution calculations
• Understanding the coexistence of spin-up and spin-down behaviors in long period X-ray pulsars