Discovery of a new accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar in the globular cluster NGC 2808


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We report on the discovery of coherent pulsations at a period of 2.9 ms from the X-ray transient MAXI J0911-655 in the globular cluster NGC 2808. We observed X-ray pulsations at a frequency of $sim339.97$ Hz in three different observations of the source performed with XMM-Newton and NuSTAR during the source outburst. This newly discovered accreting millisecond pulsar is part of an ultra-compact binary system characterised by an orbital period of $44.3$ minutes and a projected semi-major axis of $sim17.6$ lt-ms. Based on the mass function we estimate a minimum companion mass of 0.024 M$_{odot}$, which assumes a neutron star mass of 1.4 M$_{odot}$ and a maximum inclination angle of $75^{circ}$ (derived from the lack of eclipses and dips in the light-curve of the source). We find that the companion stars Roche-Lobe could either be filled by a hot ($5times 10^{6}$ K) pure helium white dwarf with a 0.028 M$_{odot}$ mass (implying $isimeq58^{circ}$) or an old (>5 Gyr) brown dwarf with metallicity abundances between solar/sub-solar and mass ranging in the interval 0.065$-$0.085 M$_{odot}$ (16 < $i$ < 21). During the outburst the broad-band energy spectra are well described by a superposition of a weak black-body component (kT$sim$ 0.5 keV) and a hard cutoff power-law with photon index $Gamma sim$ 1.7 and cut-off at a temperature kT$_esim$ 130 keV. Up to the latest Swift-XRT observation performed on 2016 July 19 the source has been observed in outburst for almost 150 days, which makes MAXI J0911-655 the second accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar with outburst duration longer than 100 days.

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