The soft X-ray spectrum of transient pulsars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
Date Issued
2016
Author(s)
Abstract
The Small Magellanic Cloud is characterized by a high number of transient accreting pulsars, which can reach luminosities up to 10^{38} erg s^{-1} during their outbursts. Due to the low Galactic interstellar absorption in the SMC direction, these sources offer a unique opportunity to investigate the soft end of the X-ray spectrum in accreting pulsars. In the last two years we observed with XMM-Newton the large outburst of two of these transient pulsars (RX J0059.2-7138 and SMC X-2). Thanks to the high throughput and spectral resolution of XMM, these observations allowed us to investigate at an unprecedented level of detail their spectral and timing properties at soft X-ray energies. We found that both sources show a pulsed emission also at low energies, and that they are characterized by a thermal component which dominates the source spectrum below 0.5 keV; moreover, we discovered several emission and absorption features, which are very likely produced by photoionization of plasma located above the inner regions of the accretion disc.
Coverage
XMM-Newton: The Next Decade
Start page
96
Conferenece
XMM-Newton: The Next Decade
Conferenece place
ESAC - Madrid, Spain
Conferenece date
9-11 May, 2016
Ads BibCode
2016xnnd.confE..96L
Rights
open.access
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2016_XMM-next-decade_La-Palombara_Transient-pulsars-in-SMC.pdf
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884.19 KB
Format
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