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Register a new userA magnetar-powered X-ray transient as the aftermath of a binary neutron-star merger
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Neutron star-neutron star mergers are known to be associated with short gamma-ray bursts. If the neutron star equation of state is sufficiently stiff, at least some of such mergers will leave behind a supramassive or even a stable neutron star that spins rapidly with a strong magnetic field (i.e., a magnetar). Such a magnetar signature may have been observed as the X-ray plateau following a good fraction (up to 50%) of short gamma-ray bursts, and it has been expected that one may observe short gamma-ray burst-less X-ray transients powered by double neutron star mergers. A fast X-ray transient (CDF-S XT1) was recently found to be associated with a faint host galaxy whose redshift is unknown. Its X-ray and host-galaxy properties allow several possibleexplanations including a short gamma-ray burst seen off axis, a low-luminosity gamma-ray burst at high redshift, or a tidal disruption event involving an intermediate mass black hole and a white dwarf. Here we report a second X-ray transient, CDF-S XT2, that is associated with a galaxy at redshift z = 0.738. The light curve is fully consistent with being powered by a millisecond magnetar. More intriguingly, CDF-S XT2 lies in the outskirts of its star-forming host galaxy with a moderate offset from the galaxy center, as short bursts often do. The estimated event rate density of similar X-ray transients, when corrected to the local value, is consistent with the double neutron star merger rate density inferred from the detection of GW170817.
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Two bright X-ray transients were reported from the Chandra Deep Field South archival data, namely CDF-S XT1 and XT2. Whereas the nature of the former is not identified, the latter was suggested as an excellent candidate for a rapidly spinning magnetar born from a binary neutron star (BNS) merger. Here we propose a unified model to interpret both transients within the framework of the BNS merger magnetar model. According to our picture, CDF-S XT2 is observed from the free zone where the magnetar spindown powered X-ray emission escapes freely, whereas CDF-S XT1 originates from the trapped zone where the X-ray emission is initially blocked by the dynamical ejecta and becomes transparent after the ejecta is pushed to a distance where Thomson optical depth drops below unity. We fit the magnetar model to the light curves of both transients and derived consistent parameters for the two events, with magnetic field, initial spin period and X-ray emission efficiency being ($B_p=10^{16},G$, $P=1.2,rm ms$, $eta = 0.001$) and ($B_p=10^{15.8},G$, $P=4.4, rm ms$, $eta = 0.001$) for XT1 and XT2, respectively. The isotropic equivalent ejecta mass of XT1 is $M_{rm ej} sim 10^{-3}$ $M_{odot}$, while it is not constrained for XT2. Our results suggest that more extreme magnetar parameters are required to have XT1 detected from the trapped zone. The model parameters for both events are generally consistent with those derived from SGRB X-ray plateau observations. The host galaxy properties of both transients are also consistent with those of SGRBs. The event rate densities of both XT1 and XT2 are consistent with that of BNS mergers.
We present the first special relativistic, axisymmetric hydrodynamic simulations of black hole-torus systems (approximating general relativistic gravity) as remnants of binary-neutron star (NS-NS) and neutron star-black hole (NS-BH) mergers, in which the viscously driven evolution of the accretion torus is followed with self-consistent energy-dependent neutrino transport and the interaction with the cloud of dynamical ejecta expelled during the NS-NS merging is taken into account. The modeled torus masses, BH masses and spins, and the ejecta masses, velocities, and spatial distributions are adopted from relativistic merger simulations. We find that energy deposition by neutrino annihilation can accelerate outflows with initially high Lorentz factors along polar low-density funnels, but only in mergers with extremely low baryon pollution in the polar regions. NS-BH mergers, where polar mass ejection during the merging phase is absent, provide sufficiently baryon-poor environments to enable neutrino-powered, ultrarelativistic jets with terminal Lorentz factors above 100 and considerable dynamical collimation, favoring short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs), although their typical energies and durations might be too small to explain the majority of events. In the case of NS-NS mergers, however, neutrino emission of the accreting and viscously spreading torus is too short and too weak to yield enough energy for the outflows to break out from the surrounding ejecta shell as highly relativistic jets. We conclude that neutrino annihilation alone cannot power sGRBs from NS-NS mergers.
We report on the detection and follow-up multi-wavelength observations of the new X-ray transient MAXI J1807+132 with the MAXI/GSC, Swift, and ground-based optical telescopes. The source was first recognized with the MAXI/GSC on 2017 March 13. About a week later, it reached the maximum intensity ($sim$10 mCrab in 2-10 keV), and then gradually faded in $sim$10 days by more than one order of magnitude. Time-averaged Swift/XRT spectra in the decaying phase can be described by a blackbody with a relatively low temperature (0.1-0.5 keV), plus a hard power-law component with a photon index of $sim$2. These spectral properties are similar to those of neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) in their dim periods. The blackbody temperature and the radius of the emission region varied in a complex manner as the source became dimmer. The source was detected in the optical wavelength on March 27-31 as well. The optical flux decreased monotonically as the X-ray flux decayed. The correlation between the X-ray and optical fluxes is found to be consistent with those of known neutron star LMXBs, supporting the idea that the source is likely to be a transient neutron star LMXB.
Short gamma-ray bursts may originate from the merger of double neutron stars (NS) or that of a black hole (BH) and an NS. We propose that the bright X-ray flare related to the central engine reactivity may hint a BH-NS merger, since such a merger can provide more fall-back materials and therefore a more massive accretion disk than the NS-NS merger. Based on the observed 49 short bursts with Swift/X-ray Telescope follow-up observations, we find that three bursts have bright X-ray flares, among which three flares from two bursts are probably related to the central engine reactivity. We argue that these two bursts may originate from the BH-NS merger rather than the NS-NS merger. Our suggested link between the central engine-powered bright X-ray flare and the BH-NS merger event can be checked by the future gravitational wave detections from advanced LIGO and Virgo.
X-ray observations of some short gamma-ray bursts indicate that a long-lived neutron star can form as a remnant of a binary neutron star merger. We develop a gravitational-wave detection pipeline for a long-lived binary neutron star merger remnant guided by these counterpart electromagnetic observations. We determine the distance out to which a gravitational-wave signal can be detected with Advanced LIGO at design sensitivity and the Einstein Telescope using this method, guided by X-ray data from GRB140903A as an example. Such gravitational waves can in principle be detected out to $sim$ 20 Mpc for Advanced LIGO and $sim$ 450 Mpc for the Einstein Telescope assuming a fiducial ellipticity of $10^{-2}$. However, in practice we can rule out such high values of the ellipticity as the total energy emitted in gravitational waves would be greater than the total rotational energy budget of the system. We show how these observations can be used to place upper limits on the ellipticity using these energy considerations. For GRB140903A, the upper limit on the ellipticity is $10^{-3}$, which lowers the detectable distance to $sim$ 2 Mpc and $sim$ 45 Mpc for Advanced LIGO and the Einstein Telescope, respectively.
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