2017ApJ...849...87S -
Astrophys. J., 849, 87-87 (2017/November-2)
State switching of the X-Ray/radio transitional millisecond pulsar.
SHANG L.-H., ZHANG C.-M., LI D., WANG D.-H., WANG S.-Q., WANG P., PAN Y.-Y., YANG Y.-Y. and ZHI Q.-J.
Abstract (from CDS):
PSR J1023+0038 is a known transitional pulsar, which switches between the accretion-powered X-ray pulsar state and the rotation-powered radio millisecond pulsar (MSP) state. Here, we study the conditions for its state transition by ascribing ∼GHz radio pulse emission to the plasma cutoff oscillation frequency at the magnetosphere, which depends on the plasma density or accretion rate. With the accretion X-ray luminosity declining fromhigh to low state (e.g., ∼1035 erg s–1 to ∼1032 erg s–1), the magnetosphere boundary expands to the light cylinder, where the plasma density is low enough to permit the emission of radio waves at the several-GHz frequency band. Thus, for a sufficiently low accretion-rate state (∼1032 erg s–1), the radio emission at the several-GHz band is not blocked by the plasma, and the radio pulsar can be detected in the favored "observational windows," i.e., the L band (1-2 GHz), S band (2-4 GHz), and C band (4-8 GHz). Furthermore, to evaluate the penetration characteristics of the outgoing radio wave of low frequency, we calculate its skin depth, which is found to be a couple of centimeters for the low X-ray luminosity of 1034–1032 erg s–1, a scale that is much shorter than the light cylinder radius of about 100 km for MSPs.
Abstract Copyright:
© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Journal keyword(s):
binaries: general - pulsars: individual: PSR J1023+0038 - stars: neutron - stars: rotation - X-rays: binaries - X-rays: binaries
Simbad objects:
5
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