2008/10/27 by S. Campana, Sergio Campana, Luigi Stella +5 · 13 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Black-body radiation #Component (thermodynamics) #Flux (metallurgy) #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Millisecond #Millisecond pulsar #Neutron star #Optics #Physics #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Radiation #X-ray pulsar #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/595867
published in The Astrophysical Journal 689(2), L129-L132 (IOP Publishing) · 5 pages - 2 figures. Accepted for publication on ApJL
arxiv created 2008/10/27 · openalex publication_date 2008/11/12 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present X-ray observations of the transient accretion-powered millisecond pulsar IGR J00291+5934 during quiescence. IGR J00291+5934 is the first source among accretion-powered millisecond pulsars to show signs of a thermal component in its quiescent spectrum. Fitting this component with a neutron star atmosphere or a blackbody model we obtain soft temperatures (~64 and ~110 eV, respectively). As in other sources of this class a hard spectral component is also present, comprising more than 60% of the unabsorbed 0.5-10 keV flux. Interpreting the soft component as cooling emission from the neutron star, we can conclude that the compact object can be spun up to millisecond periods by accreting only ≲0.2 M ☉ .