English

ULX collimation by outflows in moderately magnetized neutron stars

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2025-03-28 v1

Abstract

We perform radiative magnetohydrodynamics simulations in general relativity (GRRMHD) of super-Eddington disk accretion onto neutron stars endowed with a magnetic dipole corresponding to surface strengths not exceeding 100 GigaGauss. Accretion is found to power strong outflows which collimate the emergent radiation of the accretion columns, leading to apparent radiative luminosities of 100\sim 100 Eddington, when the true luminosity is a few Eddington units. Surprisingly, the collimation cone/angle widens with increasing magnetic field. Thus, in our simulations the apparent luminosity of the neutron star is substantially larger for the weaker magnetic fields (101010^{10}\,G) than for the stronger ones (101110^{11}\,G). We conclude that a super-Eddington accreting neutron star with the dipole magnetic field 101010^{10}\,G is the most likely source of ultraluminous X-rays.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.12282,
  title  = {ULX collimation by outflows in moderately magnetized neutron stars},
  author = {Fatemeh Kayanikhoo and Włodek Kluźniak and Miljenko Čemeljić},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.12282},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

10 pages, 6 figures, Accepted in APJ

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:47:53.352Z