The companions of evaporating binary pulsars (black widows and related systems) show optical emission suggesting strong heating. In a number of cases large observed temperatures and asymmetries are inconsistent with direct radiative heating for the observed pulsar spindown power and expected distance. Here we describe a heating model in which the pulsar wind sets up an intrabinary shock (IBS) against the companion wind and magnetic field, and a portion of the shock particles duct along this field to the companion magnetic poles. We show that a variety of heating patterns, and improved fits to the observed light curves, can be obtained at expected pulsar distances and luminosities, at the expense of a handful of model parameters. We test this `IBS-B' model against three well observed binaries and comment on the implications for system masses.
@article{arxiv.1706.05467,
title = {B-ducted Heating of Black Widow Companions},
author = {Nicholas Sanchez and Roger W. Romani},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.05467},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
To appear in ApJ; 9 pages, 7 figures -- v2 updates fits, numbers in Table 2