Rapid orbital expansion in millisecond pulsar PSR J0636+5128: evaporation winds? [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2011.13923


PSR J0636+5128 is a 2.87 ms binary millisecond pulsar (MSP) discovered by the Green Bank Northern Celestial Cap Pulsar Survey, and possesses the third shortest orbital period ($P=1.6$ hour) among confirmed binary pulsars. Recent observations reported that this source is experiencing a rapid orbital expansion at a rate of $\dot{P}=(1.89\pm0.05)\times 10^{-12}~\rm s\,s^{-1}$. The evaporation winds of the companion induced by the spin-down luminosity of the MSP may be responsible for such a positive orbital period derivative. However, our calculations show that the winds ejecting from the vicinity of the companion or the inner Lagrangian point can not account for the observation due to an implausible evaporation efficiency. Assuming that the evaporation winds eject from the vicinity of the MSP in the form of asymmetry disc winds or outflow, the evaporation efficiency can be constrained to be $\sim 0.1$. Therefore, the rapidly orbital expansion detected in PSR J0636+5128 provides evidence of outflows and accretion disc around the MSP.

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W. Chen
Tue, 1 Dec 20
72/108

Comments: 5 pages, 1 table, MNRAS in press