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Orbital decay in M82 X-2

Orbital decay in M82 X-2
Orbital decay in M82 X-2

M82 X-2 is the first pulsating ultraluminous X-ray source discovered. The luminosity of these extreme pulsars, if isotropic, implies an extreme mass transfer rate. An alternative is to assume a much lower mass transfer rate, but with an apparent luminosity boosted by geometrical beaming. Only an independent measurement of the mass transfer rate can help discriminate between these two scenarios. In this paper, we follow the orbit of the neutron star for 7 yr, measure the decay of the orbit ( P ̇ orb / P orb ≈ − 8 · 10 − 6 yr − 1 ), and argue that this orbital decay is driven by extreme mass transfer of more than 150 times the mass transfer limit set by the Eddington luminosity. If this is true, the mass available to the accretor is more than enough to justify its luminosity, with no need for beaming. This also strongly favors models where the accretor is a highly magnetized neutron star.

astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.HE
1538-4357
Bachetti, Matteo
6a6bb4d1-0e16-4284-a923-16115c6d3c9d
Heida, Marianne
5def730d-b1c2-43e2-9d44-57689bb3a604
Maccarone, Thomas
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Huppenkothen, Daniela
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Israel, Gian Luca
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Barret, Didier
66561ac0-81f1-4977-9ccc-b23c90d658e7
Brightman, Murray
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Brumback, McKinley
c87f4650-6acd-46b0-85b3-70938fee5684
Earnshaw, Hannah P.
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Forster, Karl
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Fürst, Felix
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Grefenstette, Brian W.
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Harrison, Fiona A.
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Jaodand, Amruta D.
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Madsen, Kristin K.
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Middleton, Matthew
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Pike, Sean N.
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Pilia, Maura
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Poutanen, Juri
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Stern, Daniel
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Tomsick, John A.
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Walton, Dominic J.
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Webb, Natalie
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Wilms, Jörn
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Bachetti, Matteo
6a6bb4d1-0e16-4284-a923-16115c6d3c9d
Heida, Marianne
5def730d-b1c2-43e2-9d44-57689bb3a604
Maccarone, Thomas
a3d244ea-9c9a-41db-9818-961efb51b946
Huppenkothen, Daniela
f03b1596-7c31-4b18-a869-13660a7b60c2
Israel, Gian Luca
43b24cdc-4b44-4e18-98e2-aaf5fe7c739b
Barret, Didier
66561ac0-81f1-4977-9ccc-b23c90d658e7
Brightman, Murray
57cbed53-6026-477c-be63-e670ab4e36cf
Brumback, McKinley
c87f4650-6acd-46b0-85b3-70938fee5684
Earnshaw, Hannah P.
11572d2c-fb3f-4e4f-a87e-023edaf2b2f9
Forster, Karl
a528833f-b87a-4ada-93d0-c21d5a6ffab9
Fürst, Felix
859045eb-4966-4cea-8f48-28c832d162f3
Grefenstette, Brian W.
5818b718-9291-46e4-a0d8-cca1142c1e76
Harrison, Fiona A.
d12bd352-3538-4dac-86fb-f13bc5837016
Jaodand, Amruta D.
96c58df2-5a2e-4fe1-8366-ac2cdd820fa8
Madsen, Kristin K.
0fb75d4a-d75f-455f-b4ba-92885f07744e
Middleton, Matthew
f91b89d9-fd2e-42ec-aa99-1249f08a52ad
Pike, Sean N.
a3e8fd64-fc70-4f89-8948-30319ec9c12e
Pilia, Maura
92dc52bc-d8d8-40db-a8d6-fad44dde8d2d
Poutanen, Juri
93d3d495-82be-485b-b463-9956913f78a0
Stern, Daniel
2eae31a8-424f-4084-837e-ce12a4d00437
Tomsick, John A.
96b2e8cc-70c1-424a-8380-2551a5077ff5
Walton, Dominic J.
3cf6ea78-7dd5-4765-8c09-ba2af76f11e7
Webb, Natalie
f12a5e10-a3fa-4d24-8b44-9855d0b095df
Wilms, Jörn
0334746e-44ba-42ca-8634-4a4676c210f3

Bachetti, Matteo, Heida, Marianne, Maccarone, Thomas, Huppenkothen, Daniela, Israel, Gian Luca, Barret, Didier, Brightman, Murray, Brumback, McKinley, Earnshaw, Hannah P., Forster, Karl, Fürst, Felix, Grefenstette, Brian W., Harrison, Fiona A., Jaodand, Amruta D., Madsen, Kristin K., Middleton, Matthew, Pike, Sean N., Pilia, Maura, Poutanen, Juri, Stern, Daniel, Tomsick, John A., Walton, Dominic J., Webb, Natalie and Wilms, Jörn (2022) Orbital decay in M82 X-2. The Astrophysical Journal, 937 (2), [125]. (doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac8d67).

Record type: Article

Abstract

M82 X-2 is the first pulsating ultraluminous X-ray source discovered. The luminosity of these extreme pulsars, if isotropic, implies an extreme mass transfer rate. An alternative is to assume a much lower mass transfer rate, but with an apparent luminosity boosted by geometrical beaming. Only an independent measurement of the mass transfer rate can help discriminate between these two scenarios. In this paper, we follow the orbit of the neutron star for 7 yr, measure the decay of the orbit ( P ̇ orb / P orb ≈ − 8 · 10 − 6 yr − 1 ), and argue that this orbital decay is driven by extreme mass transfer of more than 150 times the mass transfer limit set by the Eddington luminosity. If this is true, the mass available to the accretor is more than enough to justify its luminosity, with no need for beaming. This also strongly favors models where the accretor is a highly magnetized neutron star.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 30 August 2022
Published date: 5 October 2022
Additional Information: Funding Information: The authors wish to thank Victoria Grinberg, Włodek Kluźniak, and Alessandro Ridolfi for useful discussions, and the staff at the NuSTAR Science Operations Center at Caltech for the help in scheduling the observations and the frequent clock-correction file updates, which allowed a prompt analysis of the data. We would also wish to thank the anonymous referee, and the three referees of a previous submission, who provided very insightful feedback that led to a substantial improvement of the quality of the analysis. M.B. was funded in part by PRIN TEC INAF 2019 “SpecTemPolar!—Timing analysis in the era of high-throughput photon detectors”. M.H. is supported by an ESO fellowship. G.L.I. and M.B. acknowledge funding from the Italian MIUR PRIN grant No. 2017LJ39LM. A.D.J. was funded in part by the Chandra grant No. 803-0000-716015-404H00-6100-2723-4210-40716015HH83121. J.P. was supported by the grant No. 14.W03.31.0021 of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation and the Academy of Finland grant No. 333112. D.J.W. acknowledges support from STFC in the form of an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship. H.P.E. acknowledges support under NASA Contract No. NNG08FD60C. Funding Information: All the analysis of this paper was done using open-source software, Astropy, Stingray, HENDRICS, PINT, emcee, corner, and scinum, and can easily be verified using the solutions in Tables and . The implementation of the Pletsch & Clark () method can be found in the github repository https://github.com/matteobachetti/ell1fit . Figures were produced using the Matplotlib library and the Veusz software. The data used for this work come from the NuSTAR and XMM-Newton missions and are usually held private for one year, and made public on the High Energy Astrophysics Science archive (HEASARC) and the XMM-Newton Science Archive (XSA) afterwards. NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by the JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NuSTAR was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles, Virginia. XMM-Newton is an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA. Publisher Copyright: © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
Keywords: astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.HE

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 472491
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/472491
ISSN: 1538-4357
PURE UUID: 1b5e3a74-95c2-4255-b5c8-0a4c59681628

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Date deposited: 06 Dec 2022 17:50
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 23:10

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Contributors

Author: Matteo Bachetti
Author: Marianne Heida
Author: Thomas Maccarone
Author: Daniela Huppenkothen
Author: Gian Luca Israel
Author: Didier Barret
Author: Murray Brightman
Author: McKinley Brumback
Author: Hannah P. Earnshaw
Author: Karl Forster
Author: Felix Fürst
Author: Brian W. Grefenstette
Author: Fiona A. Harrison
Author: Amruta D. Jaodand
Author: Kristin K. Madsen
Author: Sean N. Pike
Author: Maura Pilia
Author: Juri Poutanen
Author: Daniel Stern
Author: John A. Tomsick
Author: Dominic J. Walton
Author: Natalie Webb
Author: Jörn Wilms

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