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The X-ray polarimetry view of the accreting pulsar Cen X-3

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arxiv 2209.02447 v1 pith:MYXEEAO7 submitted 2022-09-06 astro-ph.HE

The X-ray polarimetry view of the accreting pulsar Cen X-3

Sergey S. Tsygankov , Victor Doroshenko , Juri Poutanen , Jeremy Heyl , Alexander A. Mushtukov , Ilaria Caiazzo , Alessandro Di Marco , Sofia V. Forsblom
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Denis Gonz\'alez-Caniulef Moritz Klawin Fabio La Monaca Christian Malacaria Herman L. Marshall Fabio Muleri Mason Ng Valery F. Suleimanov Rashid A. Sunyaev Roberto Turolla Iv\'an Agudo Lucio A. Antonelli Matteo Bachetti Luca Baldini Wayne H. Baumgartner Ronaldo Bellazzini Stefano Bianchi Stephen D. Bongiorno Raffaella Bonino Alessandro Brez Niccol\`o Bucciantini Fiamma Capitanio Simone Castellano Elisabetta Cavazzuti Stefano Ciprini Enrico Costa Alessandra De Rosa Ettore Del Monte Laura Di Gesu Niccol\`o Di Lalla Immacolata Donnarumma Michal Dov\v{c}iak Steven R. Ehlert Teruaki Enoto Yuri Evangelista Sergio Fabiani Riccardo Ferrazzoli Javier A. Garcia Shuichi Gunji Kiyoshi Hayashida Wataru Iwakiri Svetlana G. Jorstad Vladimir Karas Takao Kitaguchi Jeffery J. Kolodziejczak Henric Krawczynski Luca Latronico Ioannis Liodakis Simone Maldera Alberto Manfreda Fr\'ed\'eric Marin Andrea Marinucci Alan P. Marscher Giorgio Matt Ikuyuki Mitsuishi Tsunefumi Mizuno C.-Y. Ng Stephen L. O'Dell Nicola Omodei Chiara Oppedisano Alessandro Papitto George G. Pavlov Abel L. Peirson Matteo Perri Melissa Pesce-Rollins Pierre-Olivier Petrucci Maura Pilia Andrea Possenti Simonetta Puccetti Brian D. Ramsey John Rankin Ajay Ratheesh Roger W. Romani Carmelo Sgr\`o Patrick Slane Paolo Soffitta Gloria Spandre Toru Tamagawa Fabrizio Tavecchio Roberto Taverna Yuzuru Tawara Allyn F. Tennant Nicolas E. Thomas Francesco Tombesi Alessio Trois Jacco Vink Martin C. Weisskopf Kinwah Wu Fei Xie Silvia Zane
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classification astro-ph.HE
keywords polarizationupperanglefluxpulsarsigmasignificantx-ray
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Cen X-3 is the first X-ray pulsar discovered 50 years ago. Radiation from such objects is expected to be highly polarized due to birefringence of plasma and vacuum associated with propagation of photons in presence of the strong magnetic field. Here we present results of the observations of Cen X-3 performed with the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer. The source exhibited significant flux variability and was observed in two states different by a factor of ~20 in flux. In the low-luminosity state no significant polarization was found either in pulse phase-averaged (with the 3$\sigma$ upper limit of 12%) or phase-resolved data (the 3$\sigma$ upper limits are 20-30%). In the bright state the polarization degree of 5.8$\pm$0.3% and polarization angle of $49.6\deg\pm1.5\deg$ with significance of about 20$\sigma$ was measured from the spectro-polarimetric analysis of the phase-averaged data. The phase-resolved analysis showed a significant anti-correlation between the flux and the polarization degree as well as strong variations of the polarization angle. The fit with the rotating vector model indicates a position angle of the pulsar spin axis of about 49$\deg$ and a magnetic obliquity of 17$\deg$. The detected relatively low polarization can be explained if the upper layers of the neutron star surface are overheated by the accreted matter and the conversion of the polarization modes occurs within the transition region between the upper hot layer and a cooler underlying atmosphere. A fraction of polarization signal can also be produced by reflection of radiation from the neutron star surface and the accretion curtain.

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  1. Magnetospheric flows in X-ray pulsars II: Heating, cooling and ionization degree at sub-critical accretion

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    Sub-critical magnetospheric accretion flows in X-ray pulsars cool to tens of eV near the surface and become partially ionized, contrary to the standard fully-ionized assumption.