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Register a new userCosmic ray positrons from compact binary millisecond pulsars
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A new population of neutron stars has emerged during the last decade: compact binary millisecond pulsars (CBMSPs). Because these pulsars and their companion stars are in tight orbits with typical separations of $10^{11}$ cm, their winds interact strongly forming an intrabinary shock. Electron-positron pairs reaccelerated at the shock can reach energies of about 10 TeV, which makes this new population a potential source of GeV-TeV cosmic ray positrons. We present an analytical model for the fluxes and spectra of positrons from intrabinary shocks of CBMSPs. We find that the minimum energy $E_{min}$ of the pairs that enter the shock is critical to quantify the energy spectrum with which positrons are injected into the interstellar medium. We measure for the first time the Galactic scale height of CBMSPs, $z_e=0.4pm0.1$ kpc, after correcting for an observational bias against finding them close to the Galactic plane. From this, we estimate a local density of 5-9 kpc$^{-3}$ and an extrapolated total of 2-7 thousand CBMSPs in the Galaxy. We then propagate the pairs in the isotropic diffusion approximation and find that the positron flux from the total population is about two times higher than that from the 52 currently known systems. For $E_{min}$ between 1 and 50 GeV, our model predicts only a minor contribution from CBMSPs to the diffuse positron flux at 100 GeV observed at Earth. We also quantify the effects of anisotropic transport due to the ordered Galactic magnetic field, which can change the diffuse flux from nearby sources drastically. Finally, we find that a single hidden CBMSP close to the Galactic plane can yield a positron flux comparable to the AMS-02 measurements at 600 GeV if its line-of-sight to Earth is along the ordered Galactic field lines, while its combined electron and positron flux at higher energies would be close to the measurements of CALET, DAMPE and Fermi-LAT.
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The maximum mass of a neutron star has important implications across multiple research fields, including astrophysics, nuclear physics and gravitational wave astronomy. Compact binary millisecond pulsars (with orbital periods shorter than about a day) are a rapidly-growing pulsar population, and provide a good opportunity to search for the most massive neutron stars. Applying a new method to measure the velocity of both sides of the companion star, we previously found that the compact binary millisecond pulsar PSR J2215+5135 hosts one of the most massive neutron stars known to date, with a mass of 2.27$pm$0.16 M$_odot$ (Linares, Shahbaz & Casares, 2018). We reexamine the properties of the 0.33 M$_odot$ companion star, heated by the pulsar, and argue that irradiation in this redback binary is extreme yet stable, symmetric and not necessarily produced by an extended source. We also review the neutron star mass distribution in light of this and more recent discoveries. We compile a list of all (nine) systems with published evidence for super-massive neutron stars, with masses above 2 M$_odot$. We find that four of them are compact binary millisecond pulsars (one black widow, two redbacks and one redback candidate). This shows that compact binary millisecond pulsars are key to constraining the maximum mass of a neutron star.
Millisecond Pulsars (MSPs) are fast rotating, highly magnetized neutron stars. According to the canonical recycling scenario, MSPs form in binary systems containing a neutron star which is spun up through mass accretion from the evolving companion. Therefore, the final stage consists of a binary made of a MSP and the core of the deeply peeled companion. In the last years, however an increasing number of systems deviating from these expectations has been discovered, thus strongly indicating that our understanding of MSPs is far to be complete. The identification of the optical companions to binary MSPs is crucial to constrain the formation and evolution of these objects. In dense environments such as Globular Clusters (GCs), it also allows us to get insights on the cluster internal dynamics. By using deep photometric data, acquired both from space and ground-based telescopes, we identified 5 new companions to MSPs. Three of them being located in GCs and two in the Galactic Field. The three new identifications in GCs increased by 50% the number of such objects known before this Thesis. They all are non-degenerate stars, at odds with the expectations of the canonical recycling scenario. These results therefore suggest either that transitory phases should also be taken into account, or that dynamical processes, as exchange interactions, play a crucial role in the evolution of MSPs. We also performed a spectroscopic follow-up of the companion to PSR J1740-5340A in the GC NGC 6397, confirming that it is a deeply peeled star descending from a ~0.8$M_{odot}$ progenitor. This nicely confirms the theoretical expectations about the formation and evolution of MSPs.
Gamma-ray data from the Fermi-Large Area Telescope reveal an unexplained, apparently diffuse, signal from the Galactic bulge. The origin of this Galactic Center Excess (GCE) has been debated with proposed sources prominently including self-annihilating dark matter and a hitherto undetected population of millisecond pulsars (MSPs). We use a binary population synthesis forward model to demonstrate that an MSP population arising from the accretion induced collapse of O-Ne white dwarfs in Galactic bulge binaries can naturally explain the GCE. Synchrotron emission from MSP-launched cosmic ray electrons and positrons seems also to explain the mysterious haze of hard-spectrum, non-thermal microwave emission from the inner Galaxy detected in WMAP and Planck data.
Accreting Millisecond X-Ray Pulsars (AMXPs) are astrophysical laboratories without parallel in the study of extreme physics. In this chapter we review the past fifteen years of discoveries in the field. We summarize the observations of the fifteen known AMXPs, with a particular emphasis on the multi-wavelength observations that have been carried out since the discovery of the first AMXP in 1998. We review accretion torque theory, the pulse formation process, and how AMXP observations have changed our view on the interaction of plasma and magnetic fields in strong gravity. We also explain how the AMXPs have deepened our understanding of the thermonuclear burst process, in particular the phenomenon of burst oscillations. We conclude with a discussion of the open problems that remain to be addressed in the future.
Rotation-powered millisecond radio pulsars have been spun up to their present spin period by a $10^8$ - $10^9$ yr long X-ray-bright phase of accretion of matter and angular momentum in a low-to-intermediate mass binary system. Recently, the discovery of transitional pulsars that alternate cyclically between accretion and rotation-powered states on time scales of a few years or shorter, has demonstrated this evolutionary scenario. Here, we present a thorough statistical analysis of the spin distributions of the various classes of millisecond pulsars to assess the evolution of their spin period between the different stages. Accreting sources that showed oscillations exclusively during thermonuclear type I X-ray bursts (nuclear-powered millisecond pulsars) are found to be significantly faster than rotation-powered sources, while accreting sources that possess a magnetosphere and show coherent pulsations (accreting millisecond pulsars) are not. On the other hand, if accreting millisecond pulsars and eclipsing rotation-powered millisecond pulsars form a common class of transitional pulsars, these are shown to have a spin distribution intermediate between the faster nuclear-powered millisecond pulsars and the slower non-eclipsing rotation-powered millisecond pulsars. We interpret these findings in terms of a spin-down due to the decreasing mass-accretion rate during the latest stages of the accretion phase, and in terms of the different orbital evolutionary channels mapped by the various classes of pulsars. We summarize possible instrumental selection effects, showing that even if an unbiased sample of pulsars is still lacking, their influence on the results of the presented analysis is reduced by recent improvements in instrumentation and searching techniques.
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