http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.4252
Radio millisecond pulsars in binary systems are spun up to their present period by a Gyr-long phase of accretion of the mass transferred from a low-mass companion star. Recently, three such systems have been observed to switch between an accretion disk state and a radio pulsar regime over time-scales ranging from weeks to years, and were dubbed transitional millisecond pulsars. These sources have been often found in a sub-luminous accretion disk state, characterized by a lower X-ray luminosity (~1E33-1E34 erg/s) than the level usually attained by similar sources during X-ray outbursts (~1E36 erg/s), and by a bright radio and gamma-ray emission. The physical mechanism acting in this enigmatic state is still unclear. Here, we present the first detection of X-ray pulsations from the transitional millisecond pulsar XSS J12270-4859. Pulsations were detected by XMM-Newton during an observation performed while the source was in a sub-luminous accretion disk state. They had an rms amplitude of (7.7+/-0.5)% with a second harmonic stronger than the the fundamental frequency, and were detected when the source is neither flaring nor dipping. The most likely interpretation of this detection is that matter from the accretion disk was channelled by the neutron star magnetosphere and accreted onto its polar caps. According to standard disk accretion theory, for pulsations to be observed the mass in-flow rate in the disk was likely larger than the amount of plasma actually reaching the neutron star surface; an outflow launched by the fast rotating magnetosphere then probably took place, in agreement with the observed broad-band spectral energy distribution.We also report about the non-detection of X-ray pulsations during an observation performed while the source behaved as a rotationally-powered radio pulsar.
A. Papitto, D. Martino, T. Belloni, et. al.
Tue, 16 Dec 14
75/78
Comments: 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; submitted to MNRAS
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