Discovery of a Redback Millisecond Pulsar Candidate: 3FGL J0212.1+5320 [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.02951


We present a multi-wavelength study of the unidentified Fermi object, 3FGL J0212.1+5320. Within the 95% error ellipse, Chandra detects a bright X-ray source, which has a low-mass optical counterpart (M < 0.4 Msun and T ~ 6000K). A clear ellipsoidal modulation is shown in optical/infrared at 20.87 hours. While the gamma-ray properties of 3FGL J0212.1+5320 are all consistent with that of a millisecond pulsar, we suggest that it is a gamma-ray redback millisecond pulsar binary with a low-mass companion filling of >64% of the Roche-lobe. Spectroscopic data taken in 2015 from the Lijiang observatory show no evidence of strong emission lines, revealing the accretion is currently inactive (the pulsar state). While the X-ray luminosity and the X-ray-to-gamma-ray flux ratio are both high that are comparable to that of the two known gamma-ray transitional millisecond pulsars, 3FGL J0212.1+5320 could be a promising target to search for future transition to the accretion active state.

Read this paper on arXiv…

K. Li, A. Kong, X. Hou, et. al.
Tue, 13 Sep 16
6/91

Comments: 7 pages, including 3 figures and 1 table. Submitted to ApJ on 2016 August 19