Issue |
A&A
Volume 509, January 2010
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | L3 | |
Number of page(s) | 4 | |
Section | Letters | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/200913517 | |
Published online | 12 January 2010 |
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Swift monitoring of the new accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar IGR J17511-3057 in outburst
E. Bozzo1 - C. Ferrigno1,2 - M. Falanga3 - S. Campana4 - J. A. Kennea5 - A. Papitto6,7
1 - ISDC data centre for astrophysics, University of Geneva,
Chemin d'Écogia 16, 1290 Versoix, Switzerland
2 - IAAT, Abt. Astronomie, Universität Tübingen Sand 1, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
3 - International Space Science Institute (ISSI) Hallerstrasse 6, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
4 - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Emilio Bianchi 46, 23807 Merate (LC), Italy
5 - Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 525 Davey Lab, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
6 - Universitá degli Studi di Cagliari, Dipartimento di Fisica, SP Monserrato-Sestu, KM 0.7, 09042 Monserrato, Italy
7 - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, Poggio dei Pini, Strada 54, 09012 Capoterra (CA), Italy
Received 21 October 2009 / Accepted 28 November 2009
Abstract
Context. A new accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar, IGR J17511-3057, was discovered in outburst on 2009 September 12 during the INTEGRAL Galactic bulge monitoring programme.
Aims. To study the evolution of the source X-ray flux and spectral properties during the outburst, we requested a Swift monitoring of IGR J17511-3057.
Methods. In this paper we report on the results of the first two weeks of monitoring the source.
Results. The persistent emission of IGR J17511-3057 during the outburst is modelled well with an absorbed blackbody (
keV) and a power-law component (
-2), similar to what has been observed from other previously known millisecond pulsars. Swift
also detected three type-I Xray bursts from this source. By assuming
that the peak luminosity of these bursts is equal to the Eddington
value for a pure helium type-I X-ray burst, we derived an upper limit
to the source distance of
10 kpc.
The theoretically expected recurrence time of the bursts according to
the helium burst hypothesis is 0.2-0.9 days, in agreement with the
observations.
Key words: X-rays: binaries - pulsars: individual: IGR J17511-3057
1 Introduction
Accreting millisecond pulsars (AMSP) are neutron stars (NS) that accrete
mass from a low-mass (1
)
companion star and that show
coherent pulsations at their millisecond spin period (Bhattacharya & van den Heuvel 1991).
Since the discovery of the first AMSP in 1998, SAX J1808.4-3658 (Wijnands & van der Klis 1998), 11 other AMSPs were discovered
(see e.g.; Altamirano et al. 2009; Casella et al. 2008; Altamirano et al. 2008; Wijnands 2006, for reviews).
All the AMSP are hosted in low-mass X-ray binaries
(LMXBs) with typical orbital periods of either about 40 min or a few hours, and exhibit a transient X-ray
emission with bright outbursts (1036-1037 erg/s) occurring on a time scale from two to more than ten years, and
a typical duration of a few weeks (see e.g., Wijnands 2006). However, longer activity episodes have also been recorded (XTE J1807-294, see e.g., Falanga et al. 2005a), and one
source, HETE J1900.1-3455, has never returned in quiescence since its discovery in 2005 (Kaaret et al. 2006; Galloway 2007).
So far, only AMSP with orbital periods of a few hours have exhibited
type-I X-ray bursts (the only exception being IGR J00291+5934).
This is believed to stem from the composition of the material that is
accreted onto the NS that in turns depend on the nature of the donor
star (see e.g., Galloway & Cumming 2006,
and references therein). The broad band X-ray (0.5-200 keV)
spectra of AMSPs are generally fit by a model consisting of one or two
soft thermal components and a comptonized hard component.
The two soft components are associated with the radiation from the
accretion disk and from the heated hot spots on the NS surface. The
hard emission is likely to be produced
by thermal Comptonization of the soft photons emitted by the NS surface
in the hot accretion column above the NS hot spots (Gierlinski et al. 2002; Papitto et al. 2009; Poutanen & Gierlinski 2003; Gierlinski & Poutanen 2005; Falanga et al. 2005a; Ibragimov & Poutanen 2003; Patruno et al. 2009; Falanga et al. 2007,2005b).
In this letter we report on the first 2 weeks of monitoring with Swift
of the 12th newly discovered AMSP in outburst, IGR J17511-3057. We
discuss the evolution of the source X-ray flux and spectrum from the
onset of the outburst, when the source was discovered, up to the
beginning of the outburst decay. We also detected and analysed three
type-I X-ray bursts.
Table 1: Swift observation log of IGR J17511-3057.
1.1 The source IGR J17511-3057
IGR J17511-3057 was discovered on 2009 September 12 during
the INTEGRAL Galactic bulge monitoring program (Baldovin et al. 2009; Kuulkers et al. 2007).
The source was detected in both the IBIS/ISGRI and JEM-X mosaics, and its 3-100 keV energy spectrum was modelled
by using a power law with index .
The corresponding flux was
.
A position within
was determined, which allowed identification of IGR J17511-3057 as a new 245 Hz accreting pulsar by means of the RXTE PCA bulge scan data (Markwardt et al. 2009).
Using this instrument, the source was initially detected on 2009
September 11, but not recognized as a new object due to the
proximity of two previously known sources, XTE J1751-305 and
GRS 1747-312, the first of which is a 435 Hz X-ray
millisecond pulsar. The RXTE spectrum could be described by an absorbed power-law model with photon index 1.8 and a 2-10 keV flux of
.
A Swift ToO observation was carried out on 2009 September 13, and it allowed for a preliminary
characterization of the soft (0.5-10 keV) X-ray spectrum
and the discovery of the first thermonuclear type-I X-ray burst from the source (Bozzo et al. 2009). Burst oscillations at
245 Hz in other type-I X-ray bursts from
this source were reported by Watts et al. (2009). Further follow-up observations of IGR J17511-3057 were
carried out later with XMM-Newton (Papitto et al. 2009b) and RXTE (Riggio et al. 2009). The latter provided
the most precise ephemeris of the source and yielded a pulse frequency of
244.83395157(7) Hz, an orbital period of 12487.5126(9) s, and an
value of 275.194(3) lt-ms.
The mass function of the system is thus 0.00107025(4)
,
giving a minimum companion
mass of 0.13
(assuming an NS mass of 1.4
and errors at 1
c.l. in the last digit).
The first accurate source position was determined through a Chandra observation at
51
08
66 and
57
41
0
(1
error of
0.6
,
Nowak et al. 2009), and allowed for identifying its
infrared counterpart (Torres et al. 2009). Radio observations at this position did not result in any detection
(Miller-Jones et al. 2009).
![]() |
Figure 1: Swift /XRT long-term light curve of the outburst of IGR J17511-3057 (time bin 1000 s, start time 2009 Sept. 13 at 20:00:41 UTC). The arrows in the plot mark the time of the type-I X-ray bursts observed with Swift. The two inserts show a zoom of the first two type-I X-ray bursts (time bin is 1 s). The time on the X-axes of these inserts is measured from the t0 of the bursts. These are 2009 Sept. 14 00:50:27 and 2009 Sept. 15 at 17:17:19 (UTC), respectively. The third type-I X-ray burst (C) is reported in Fig. 2. |
Open with DEXTER |
2 Data analysis and results
To monitor the X-ray flux of IGR J17511-3057 in outburst, we requested a 2 ks daily observation for the first week, and then two other observations of 5 ks were scheduled during the second week when we noticed that the source X-ray flux was already decreasing after the beginning of the outburst (see Fig. 1). A complete log of the observations is provided in Table 1. We processed all the Swift data by using standard procedures (Burrows et al. 2005) and the latest calibration files available (caldb v. 20090407). The Swift/XRT data were analysed both in window-timing (WT) and photon-counting (PC) modes (processed with the XRTPIPELINE v.0.12.3). We used Swift /BAT data accumulated only in EVENT mode, as the statistics of the data in SURVEY mode were too poor to provide any significant constraint on the source high-energy emission (15-150 keV).
![]() |
Figure 2: The brightest type-I X-ray burst observed with Swift. The upper panel shows the BAT light curve (15-25 keV), whereas in the lower panel we reported the XRT light curve (0.5-10 keV). The time bin of the BAT and XRT/WT (XRT/PC) light curves is 1 s (5 s). The start time of the burst is 2009 Sept. 30 18:31:57 (UTC). |
Open with DEXTER |
Filtering and screening criteria were applied by using FTOOLS (Heasoft v.6.6.3). We extracted source and background light curves and spectra by selecting event grades of 0-2 and 0-12, respectively, for the WT and PC modes. Exposure maps were created through the XRTEXPOMAP task, and we used the latest spectral redistribution matrices in the HEASARC calibration database (v.011). Ancillary response files, accounting for different extraction regions, vignetting, and PSF corrections, were generated by using the XRTMKARF task. All PC data were affected by a strong pile-up, and corrected according to the technique developed by Vaughan (2006). We used the XRTLCCORR task to account for this correction in the background-subtracted light curves.
During the three type-I X-ray bursts we also checked a possible pile-up
of the XRT/WT data, caused by the high source count rate. We extracted
the source spectrum during the brightest part (6 s) of the three
events by adopting a box-shaped extraction region in which we
progressively excluded the first and then two, three, and four inner
central pixels.
These spectra were then fit with an absorbed black body model. We did not notice
any significant pile-up in the spectral properties of the source at the peaks of the first two bursts.
Only in the third burst (burst ``C'', see Fig. 2), we noticed that the XRT/WT data of the first
two seconds of the burst were affected by a relatively strong pile-up. However, the time interval over which
these data were accumulated is too short to apply the correction method described above and obtain a usable
spectrum. Therefore, we discarded these first two seconds of observation. The peak luminosity
we derive below for the third burst might thus have been somewhat higher than the value we reported,
yielding a conservative upper limit on the distance we provide in Sect. 3.
We performed a Fourier analysis of the persistent emission and of the
type I X-ray burst emission of IGR J17511-3057 in order to
search for the known 245 Hz periodicity of the source. We corrected the
photons' arrival times for the orbital motion of the source according
to the solution given by Riggio et al. (2009). During the type-I X-ray bursts, we could not detect any periodicity up to 283 Hz given a detection
threshold of 5.
This translates into an upper limit on any fractional amplitude of the pulsed signal of 0.23 (at 3
confidence level), where the binning effect of the temporal resolution of Swift /XRT in WT mode (1.8 ms) has been taken into account (van der Klis 1989).
A similar analysis carried out on the persistent emission of the
source only led to a marginal 5
detection of pulsations,
corresponding to an amplitude
0.07 (3 sigma c.l.). We note that
the sensitivity to periodic signals is hampered here by the
lower number of photons collected by Swift /XRT than by, e.g. RXTE/PCA, with which the pulsations and the burst oscillations
were detected from this source (see Sect. 1).
In Fig. 1 we show the source light curve during about two
weeks of monitoring.
2.1 Persistent emission
We extracted the source spectrum in the 0.5-10 keV energy band
for each observation in Table 1 excluding the time intervals in which a type I X-ray burst was detected. We excluded about 100 s
before and after the bursts in the observations 00031492001
and 003. In those observations in which the XRT/WT data were
accumulated during two or three different revolutions of the satellite,
we extracted the X-ray spectrum separately to search for spectral
variations. We indicated these different spectra in Table 1
by using the notation ``1'', ``2'', and ``3''. The XRT/WT spectra with
the higher statistics (observation ID: 00031492001, 003, 004, 006,
007) could not be fit by only using a simple absorbed power-law (
1-2) model (reduced
1.5-1.9,
d.o.f. in the range 112-447), and the addition of a second component
was required by the data. According to previous studies of AMSPs in
outburst, we tried a model comprising an absorbed power law (PL) plus a
black body ( BBODYRAD in XSPEC,
hereafter BB) or a disk black body ( DISKBB in XSPEC) component.
We found that the latter choice would need a highly improbable
physical explanation to account for the large, inner accretion radius
(a few hundred km) implied by the DISKBB model.
As the spectra collected at higher statistics for this and similar sources
show two soft components arising from the disk and the NS surface (see Sect. 1), we interpret the soft component detected with Swift as originating in the NS hotspots. Our interpretation is strengthened as it provides an area
for the BB-emitting region that is fully compatible with the NS surface.
This is shown in Table 1 (errors at 90% c.l.). We checked that the fits to the Swift /XRT
spectra cannot be improved significantly by introducing a Comptonization
model instead of a simple power law
above
2 keV. We tried a COMPTT model in XSPEC with different values of the
seed photon temperature. The estimated column density
is
0.5-
cm-2, compatible with the Galactic absorption in the direction of the source (Dickey & Lockman 1990). The 0.5-10 keV X-ray flux of the source decreased slowly from
erg cm-2 s to
erg cm-2 s
during the first two weeks of observation.
Table 2: The three type-I X-ray bursts parameters.
2.2 Type I X-ray bursts
We also detected in the Swift observations three type-I X-ray bursts.
The light curves of these bursts are reported in Figs. 1 and 2.
The start time of the third burst was determined by Swift /BAT (XRT
started observing the source only about 5 s
later). We performed a time-resolved spectral analysis of the three
bursts by accumulating the XRT/WT spectra in intervals of different
durations (from 1 to 10 s), depending on the source count rate.
This time-resolved analysis did not reveal a clear signature of a
photospheric radius expansion (PRE) in any of the three bursts (Lewin et al. 1993).
The relevant parameters for each burst are reported
in Table 2.
Here the peak flux of each burst was determined from a BB fit to the
spectrum of the initial 6 s of each burst (fixing the
at 0.6, see Table 1).
The persistent spectrum determined from the closest XRT/WT observation
to each of the burst was used as a background in the fit. We indicated
with
the decay time of the burst measured by fitting the observed light curve with an exponential function, and
is the duration of the burst (see e.g. Lewin et al. 1993).
3 Discussion and conclusions
In this letter we reported on the results of the first 2 weeks of the Swift
monitoring of the newly discovered AMSP IGR J17511-3057 in
outburst. Regarding the persistent emission of this source, the higher
statistics spectra measured with XRT/WT showed that two different
components were required to fit the data. These comprise a BB emission
that we interpreted as being produced onto the NS surface (as suggested
by the size of the measured radius compatible with a hotspot origin),
and a power-law component that is most likely caused by the
comptonization of the soft emission in the NS accretion column (see
Sect. 1). This spectrum qualitatively agrees with observations of
other AMSPs in outburst and with the preliminary results of the XMM-Newton observation of
IGR J17511-3057 reported by Papitto et al. (2009b).
At odds with their analysis, we could not detect the softest component
of the spectrum that was modelled with a multicolor disk blackbody
(temperature of
keV).
This most likely stems from the lower statistics and the short exposure
time of the XRT spectra compared to what is obtained with XMM-Newton (exposure time
71 ks).
From the analysis of the type-I X-ray bursts, we can estimate an upper
limit on the source distance. In principle, determination of the
distance can be obtained only when a burst undergoes a PRE; in this
case, it is assumed that the bolometric
peak luminosity of the source is saturated at the Eddington limit,
(as empirically derived by Kuulkers et al. 2003).
Unfortunately, in the case of IGR J17511-3057, our time-resolved
analysis of the bursts could not detect any evidence of a PRE. From the
measured orbital period (several hours) and the mass function of
IGR J17511-3057, we can argue that the companion star in this
system is most likely a hydrogen-rich brown dwarf, as suggested in the
case of SAX J1808.4-3658 (Bildsten & Chakrabarty 2001).
Similar to the case for this source, we thus expect that the
time elapsed between different bursts is long enough to allow the hot CNO burning to deplete the accreted hydrogen.
Therefore, the type I X-ray bursts of IGR J17511-3057
are most likely produced by the ignition of pure helium.
Under the above assumptions, the peak luminosity of the
brightest burst (C) can then be considered to be (at most) the Eddington
value
,
and
the resulting upper limit on the source distance is
kpc.
For comparison, the theoretical value of this distance
found by assuming an helium atmosphere and canonical NS parameters
(1.4 solar mass, and a radius of 10 km; see e.g., Lewin et al. 1993), is
kpc.
By using the above results, we can also evaluate the theoretically expected
recurrence time of the bursts. With a distance of d=10 kpc,
the persistent unabsorbed 0.1-100 keV flux of the
source at the timeof the bursts (A), (B), and (C)
would translate into a bolometric luminosity
of
erg s-1, respectively.
With these values at hand, we can estimate the local accretion rate per
unit area, ,
through the relation
(with z = 0.31 the NS gravitational redshift; see e.g., Lewin et al. 1993).
The ignition depths,
for the three bursts can be calculated by using the equation
,
where
,
is the fluence of the burst (see Table 2), and
MeV corresponds to the nuclear
energy release per nucleon for complete burning of helium to iron
group elements (Wallace & Woosley 1981). We obtain
,2.4,
for the bursts (A), (B), and (C), respectively.
For the above values of the local accretion rates and ignition depths, the expected recurrence time of the bursts is about
-0.9 days.
This agrees with the recurrence time measured from the XMM-Newton (two bursts in
71 ks, Papitto et al. 2009b) and
INTEGRAL observations (4 bursts in
200 ks carried out from 2009 September 16 to 2009 September 19, Falanga et al.
2009, in preparation).
Several more Swift observations of IGR J17511-3057 have already been planned. The results of this long-term monitoring campaign will be reported elsewhere (Campana et al. 2009, in preparation).
AcknowledgementsWe thank N. Gehrels and the Swift team for the rapid schedule of the observations of IGR J17511-3057, and an anonymous referee for useful comments. C.F. has been supported by grant DLR 50 OG 0601.
References
- Altamirano, D., Casella, P., Patruno, et al. 2008, ApJ, 674, L45 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Altamirano, D., Strohmayer, T. E., Heinke, C. O., et al. 2009, Astr. Tel., 2182 [Google Scholar]
- Baldovin, C., Kuulkers, E., Ferrigno, C., et al. 2009, Astr. Tel. 2196 [Google Scholar]
- Bhattacharya, D., & van den Heuvel, E. P. J. 1991, Ph.R., 203, 1 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Bildsten, L., & Chakrabarty, D. 2001, ApJ, 557, 292 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Bozzo, E., Ferrigno, C., Kuulkers, E., et al. 2009, Astr. Tel. 2198 [Google Scholar]
- Burrows, D. N., Hill, J. E., Nousek, et al. 2005, SSRv, 120, 165 [Google Scholar]
- Casella, P., Altamirano, D., Patruno, A., et al. 2008, ApJ, 674, L41 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Dickey, J. M., & Lockman, F. J. 1990, ARA&A, 28, 215 [Google Scholar]
- Falanga, M., Bonnet-Bidaud, J. M., Poutanen, J., et al. 2005a, A&A, 436, 647 [Google Scholar]
- Falanga, M., Kuiper, L., Poutanen, J., et al. 2005b, A&A, 444, 15 [Google Scholar]
- Falanga, M., Poutanen, J., Bonning, et al. 2007, A&A, 464, 1069 [Google Scholar]
- Galloway, D. K., & Cumming, A. 2006, ApJ, 652, 559 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Galloway, D. K., Morgan, E. H., Krauss, M. I., et al. 2007, ApJ, 654, L73 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Gierlinski, M., & Poutanen, J. 2005, MNRAS, 359, 1261 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Gierlinski, M., Done, C., & Barret, D. 2002, MNRAS, 331, 141 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Kaaret, P., Morgan, E. H., Vanderspek, R., et al. 2006, ApJ, 638, 963 [Google Scholar]
- van der Klis, M., 198, proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Timing Neutron Stars, 27 [Google Scholar]
- Kuulkers, E., den Hartog, P. R., in't Zand, J. J. M., et al. 2003, A&A, 399, 663 [Google Scholar]
- Kuulkers, E., Shaw, S. E., & Paizis, A. 2007, A&A, 466, 595 [Google Scholar]
- Ibragimov, A., & Poutanen, J. 2009, MNRAS, 400, 492 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Lewin, W. H. G., van Paradijs, J., & Taam, R. E. 1993, SSRv, 62, 223 [NASA ADS] [Google Scholar]
- Markwardt, C. B., Altamirano, D., Swank, J. K., et al. 2009, Astr. Tel., 2197 [Google Scholar]
- Miller-Jones, J. C. A., Russell, D. M., & Migliari, S. 2009, Astr. Tel., 2232 [Google Scholar]
- Nowak, M. A., Paizis, A., Wilms, J., et al. 2009, Astr. Tel. 2215 [Google Scholar]
- Papitto, A., Di Salvo, T., DÁi, A., et al. 2009a, MNRAS, 493, 39 [Google Scholar]
- Papitto, A., Riggio, A., Burderi, L., et al. 2009b, Astr. Tel. 2220 [Google Scholar]
- Patruno, A., Rea, N., Altamirano, D., et al. 2009, MNRAS, 396, 51 [Google Scholar]
- Poutanen, J., & Gierlinski, M. 2003, MNRAS, 343, 1301 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Riggio, A., Papitto, A., Burderi, L., et al. 2009, Astr. Tel. 2221 [Google Scholar]
- Torres, M. A. P., Jonker, P. G., Steeghs, D., et al. 2009, Astr. Tel., 2233 [Google Scholar]
- Vaughan, S., Goad, M. R., Beardmore, A. P., et al. 2006, ApJ, 638, 920 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Wallace, R. K., & Woosley, S. E. 1981, ApJS, 45, 389 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Watts, A. L., Altamirano, D., Markwardt, C. B., et al. 2009, Astr. Tel. 2199 [Google Scholar]
- Wijnands, R., & van der Klis, M. 1998, Nature, 344, 346 [Google Scholar]
- Wijnands R., 2006, in Trends in Pulsar Research, Nova Science Publishers, ed. J. A. Lowry, New York, 53 [Google Scholar]
Footnotes
- ... pixels
- see also http://www.swift.ac.uk/pileup.shtml
All Tables
Table 1: Swift observation log of IGR J17511-3057.
Table 2: The three type-I X-ray bursts parameters.
All Figures
![]() |
Figure 1: Swift /XRT long-term light curve of the outburst of IGR J17511-3057 (time bin 1000 s, start time 2009 Sept. 13 at 20:00:41 UTC). The arrows in the plot mark the time of the type-I X-ray bursts observed with Swift. The two inserts show a zoom of the first two type-I X-ray bursts (time bin is 1 s). The time on the X-axes of these inserts is measured from the t0 of the bursts. These are 2009 Sept. 14 00:50:27 and 2009 Sept. 15 at 17:17:19 (UTC), respectively. The third type-I X-ray burst (C) is reported in Fig. 2. |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 2: The brightest type-I X-ray burst observed with Swift. The upper panel shows the BAT light curve (15-25 keV), whereas in the lower panel we reported the XRT light curve (0.5-10 keV). The time bin of the BAT and XRT/WT (XRT/PC) light curves is 1 s (5 s). The start time of the burst is 2009 Sept. 30 18:31:57 (UTC). |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
Copyright ESO 2010
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.