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arXiv · 1101.0842

The soft quiescent spectrum of the transiently accreting 11 Hz X-ray pulsar in the globular cluster Terzan 5

N. Degenaar·R. Wijnands
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Abstract

We report on the quiescent X-ray properties of the recently discovered transiently accreting 11 Hz X-ray pulsar in the globular cluster Terzan 5. Using two archival Chandra observations, we demonstrate that the quiescent spectrum of this neutron star low-mass X-ray binary is soft and can be fit to a neutron star atmosphere model with a temperature of kT^inf~73 eV. A powerlaw spectral component is not required by the data and contributes at most ~20% to the total unabsorbed 0.5-10 keV flux of ~9E-14 erg/cm2/s. Such a soft quiescent spectrum is unusual for neutron stars with relatively high inferred magnetic fields and casts a different light on the interpretation of the hard spectral component, which is often attributed to magnetic field effects. For a distance of 5.5 kpc, the estimated quiescent thermal bolometric luminosity is ~6E32 erg/s. If the thermal emission is interpreted as cooling of the neutron star, the observed luminosity requires that the system is quiescent for at least ~100 years. Alternatively, enhanced neutrino emissions can cool the neutron star to the observed quiescent luminosity.

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N. Degenaar, R. Wijnands. 2011-01-04. The soft quiescent spectrum of the transiently accreting 11 Hz X-ray pulsar in the globular cluster Terzan 5. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3933.2011.01007.x

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