No Arabic abstract
We present spectra for 34 accretion-powered X-ray and one millisecond pulsars that were within the field of view of the INTEGRAL observatory over two years (December 2002 - January 2005) of its in-orbit operation and that were detected by its instruments at a statistically significant level (> 8 sigma in the energy range 18--60 keV). There are seven recently discovered objects of this class among the pulsars studied: 2RXP J130159.6-635806, IGR/AX J16320-4751, IGR J16358-4726, AX J163904-4642, IGR J16465-4507, SAX/IGR J18027-2017 and AX J1841.0-0535. We have also obtained hard X-ray (> 20 keV) spectra for the accretion-powered pulsars A 0114+650, RX J0146.9+6121, AX J1820.5-1434, AX J1841.0-0535 and the millisecond pulsar XTE J1807-294 for the first time. We analyze the evolution of spectral parameters as a function of the intensity of the sources and compare these with the results of previous studies.
We present the first results of the observations of the X-ray pulsars LMC X-4, 4U0352+309 and EXO1722-363 performed with the INTEGRAL observatory. The LMC X-4 was investigated during the whole superorbital cycle ($sim$30 days) and it was found that its period was not stable at this time scale. We detected a variable X-ray flux (18-60 keV) from the pulsar EXO1722-363, which could be connected with the orbital motion in the binary system. A more accurate position and the estimate of the orbital period for this source are reported. We also investigated a hard X-ray spectrum of 4U0352+309 (X Persei) measured with INTEGRAL and report the detection of the cyclotron absorption line at about 29 keV.
In the last 25 years, a new generation of X-ray satellites imparted a significant leap forward in our knowledge of X-ray pulsars. The discovery of accreting and transitional millisecond pulsars proved that disk accretion can spin up a neutron star to a very high rotation speed. The detection of MeV-GeV pulsed emission from a few hundreds of rotation-powered pulsars probed particle acceleration in the outer magnetosphere, or even beyond. Also, a population of two dozens of magnetars has emerged. INTEGRAL played a central role to achieve these results by providing instruments with high temporal resolution up to the hard X-ray/soft gamma-ray band and a large field of view imager with good angular resolution to spot hard X-ray transients. In this article, we review the main contributions by INTEGRAL to our understanding of the pulsating hard X-ray sky, such as the discovery and characterization of several accreting and transitional millisecond pulsars, the generation of the first catalog of hard X-ray/soft gamma-ray rotation-powered pulsars, the detection of polarization in the hard X-ray emission from the Crab pulsar, and the discovery of persistent hard X-ray emission from several magnetars.
During the last 10 years, INTEGRAL made a unique contribution to the study of accreting millisecond X-ray pulsars (AMXPs), discovering three of the 14 sources now known of this class. Besides increasing the number of known AMXPs, INTEGRAL also carried out observations of these objects above 20 keV, substantially advancing our understanding of their behaviour. We present here a review of all the AMXPs observed with INTEGRAL and discuss the physical interpretation of their behaviour in the X-ray domain. We focus in particular on the lightcurve profile during outburst, as well as the timing, spectral, and thermonuclear type-I X-ray bursts properties.
We studied spectra for 34 accretion-powered X-ray and one millisecond pulsars that were within the field of view of the INTEGRAL observatory over two years (December 2002 - January 2005) of its in-orbit operation and that were detected by its instruments at a statistically significant level (>8 sigma in the energy range 18-60 keV). There are seven recently discovered objects of this class among the pulsars studied: 2RXP J130159.6-635806, IGR/AX J16320-4751, IGR J16358-4726, AX J163904-4642, IGR J16465-4507, SAX/IGR J18027-2017 and AX J1841.0-0535. We analyze the evolution of spectral parameters as a function of the intensity of the sources and compare these with the results of previous studies.
NuSTAR observatory, with its 3 - 78 keV broadband spectral coverage, enables the detections of the high-energy cutoff in a number of active galaxies, including several individual radio loud ones. In this work we present systematic and uniform analyses of 55 NuSTAR spectra for a large sample of 28 radio galaxies, 20 of which are FR II galaxies. We perform spectral fitting to measure the high energy cut-off $E_{cut}$, photon index $Gamma$, reflection factor R and Fe K$alpha$ line equivalent width. Measurements of $E_{cut}$ are given for 13 sources, and lower limits for the rest. We find those $E_{cut}$ non-detections could primarily be attributed to the obviously smaller net photon counts in their spectra. This indicates that the NuSTAR spectra of the majority of our sample are dominated by the thermal corona emission, and the $E_{cut}$ distribution of the sample is indistinguishable from that of a radio quiet one in literature. The flatter NuSTAR spectra we observed, comparing with radio quiet sources, are thus unlikely due to jet contamination. The radio galaxies also show weaker X-ray reflection (both in R and Fe K$alpha$ line EW) comparing with radio quiet ones. Combining with the radio quiet sample we see a correlation between R and EW, but with considerably large scatter. Notably, the radio loud and quiet sources appear to follow a common $Gamma$ - R correlation trend, supporting the outflowing corona model for both populations in which higher bulk outflowing velocity yields weaker reflection and flatter X-ray slope.