Evolving neutron star+helium star systems to intermediate-mass binary pulsars [SSA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1909.07132


Intermediate-mass binary pulsars (IMBPs) are composed of neutron stars (NSs) and CO/ONe white dwarfs (WDs). It is generally suggested that IMBPs evolve from intermediate-mass X-ray binaries (IMXBs). However, this scenario is difficult to explain the formation of IMBPs with orbital periods ($P_{\rm orb}$) less than 3 d. It has recently been proposed that a system consisting of a neutron star (NS) and a helium (He) star can form IMBPs with $P_{\rm orb}$ less than 3 d (known as the NS+He star scenario), but previous works can only cover a few observed sources with short orbital periods. We aim to investigate the NS+He star scenario by adopting different descriptions of the Eddington accretion rate ($\dot M_{\rm Edd}$) for NSs and different NS masses ($M_{\rm NS}$) varying from $1.10\,\rm M_{\odot}$ to $1.80\,\rm M_{\odot}$. Our results can cover most of the observed IMBPs with short orbital periods and almost half of the observed IMBPs with long orbital periods. We found that $\dot{M}{\rm Edd}$$\propto$$M{\rm NS}$$^{\rm -1/3}$ could match the observations better than a specific value for all NSs. We also found that the final spin periods of NSs slightly decrease with the initial $M_{\rm NS}$. The observed parameters of PSR J0621+1002, which is one of the well-observed IMBPs whose pulsar mass has been precisely measured, can be reproduced by the present work.

Read this paper on arXiv…

T. Wenshi, L. Dongdong and W. Bo
Tue, 17 Sep 19
21/98

Comments: accepted for publication in MNRAS