English

A new redback pulsar candidate 4FGL J2054.2+6904

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2023-07-06 v1

Abstract

The Fermi catalogue contains about 2000 unassociated γ\gamma-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 gg and rr bands spanning over 4.7 years, we find a period of \approx7.5 h. The folded light curve has a smooth sinusoidal shape with the peak-to-peak amplitude of \approx0.4 mag. The spectral fit to the optical spectral energy distribution of the counterpart candidate gives the star radius of 0.5±\pm0.1RR_\odot and temperature of 5500±\pm300 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±\pm0.3 and unabsorbed flux of 2×1013\approx 2\times10^{-13} erg s1^{-1} cm2^{-2}. All the properties of 4FGL J2054.2++6904 and its presumed counterpart suggest that it is a member of the redback family.

Keywords

Cite

@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

R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:18:53.235Z