English

Orbital Modulation of Gamma Rays from PSR~J2339$-$0533

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2020-07-08 v1

Abstract

We report on orbital modulation of the 100-600 MeV gamma-ray emission of the PB=4.6P_{\rm B}=4.6 hr millisecond pulsar binary PSR J2339-0533 using 11 yr of Fermi Large Area Telescope data. The modulation has high significance (chance probability p107p\approx 10^{-7}), is approximately sinusoidal, peaks near pulsar superior conjunction, and is detected only in the low-energy 100-600 MeV band. The modulation is confined to the on-pulse interval, suggesting that the variation is in the 2.9-ms pulsed signal itself. This contrasts with the few other known systems exhibiting GeV orbital modulations, as these are unpulsed and generally associated with beamed emission from an intrabinary shock. The origin of the modulated pulsed signal is not yet clear, although we describe several scenarios, including Compton upscattering of photons from the heated companion. This would require high coherence in the striped pulsar wind.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2005.07888,
  title  = {Orbital Modulation of Gamma Rays from PSR~J2339$-$0533},
  author = {Hongjun An and Roger W. Romani and Matthew Kerr},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.07888},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

11 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ