Propeller effect in action in the ultraluminous accreting magnetar M82 X-2
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
2016-02-03 v2
Abstract
We present here the first convincing observational manifestation of a magnetar-like magnetic field in an accreting neutron star in binary system - the first pulsating ultra-luminous X-ray source X-2 in the galaxy M82. Using the Chandra X-ray observatory data we show that the source exhibit the bimodal distribution of the luminosity with two well-defined peaks separated by a factor of 40. This behaviour can be interpreted as the action of the "propeller regime" of accretion. The onset of the propeller in a 1.37 s pulsar at luminosity of ~ erg/s implies the dipole component of the neutron star magnetic field of ~ G.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1507.08288,
title = {Propeller effect in action in the ultraluminous accreting magnetar M82 X-2},
author = {Sergey S. Tsygankov and Alexander A. Mushtukov and Valery F. Suleimanov and Juri Poutanen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.08288},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
6 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, accepted by MNRAS