The Fermi catalogue contains about 2000 unassociated γ-ray sources. Some of them were recently identified as pulsars, including so called redbacks and black widows, which are millisecond pulsars in tight binary systems with non- and partially-degenerate low-mass stellar companions irradiated by the pulsar wind. We study a likely optical and X-ray counterpart of the Fermi source 4FGL J2054.2+6904 proposed earlier as a pulsar candidate. We use archival optical data as well as Swift/XRT and SRG/eROSITA X-ray data to clarify its nature. Using Zwicky Transient Facility data in g and r bands spanning over 4.7 years, we find a period of ≈7.5 h. The folded light curve has a smooth sinusoidal shape with the peak-to-peak amplitude of ≈0.4 mag. The spectral fit to the optical spectral energy distribution of the counterpart candidate gives the star radius of 0.5±0.1R⊙ and temperature of 5500±300 K implying a G2--G9-type star. Its X-ray spectrum is well fitted by an absorbed power law with the photon index of 1.0±0.3 and unabsorbed flux of ≈2×10−13 erg s−1 cm−2. All the properties of 4FGL J2054.2+6904 and its presumed counterpart suggest that it is a member of the redback family.
@article{arxiv.2306.17593,
title = {A new redback pulsar candidate 4FGL J2054.2+6904},
author = {A. V. Karpova and D. A. Zyuzin and Yu. A. Shibanov and M. R. Gilfanov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.17593},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 6 pages, 6 figures