X-ray pulsar 1E 1145.1-6141 examined with NuSTAR

Tomasz Nowakowski is a member of the physics.org community.

An X-ray pulsar known as 1E 11451-6141 has been inspected by NASA's NuSTAR. The results of the observations give insight into the nature of this pulsar. A paper detailing the study was published in October.

An accretion-powered pulsar is a source showing strict periodic variations in X-ray intensity, consisting of a magnetized neutron star in the middle of a stellar companion. The X-ray emission is powered by the release of energy from the massive companion.

Astronomers divide X-ray binaries into two groups based on the mass of the companion star. There are two types of HMXBs with neutron stars, Be/X-ray binaries and Supergiant X-ray binaries.

The HMXB is thought to be located 27,700 light years away from the earth. 1E 1145.1-6141 has a pulse period of 297 seconds, a orbital period of 14 days and a low luminosity.

A team of astronomer led by Manoj Ghising of the North Bengal University in Darjeeling, India examined this pulsar using NuSTAR in order to shed more light on its properties.

The data observed by NuSTAR has been used to examine the temporal andspectral properties of the source.

The pulsation of 1E 1145.1-8141 was detected by the observations. The researchers concluded that it may be in a spin equilibrium phase based on previous studies.

The pulse profile was dominated by a single peak and phase of 0.7. The accretion geometry of this source may have changed due to the shape of the pulse profile evolving.

The study states that X-ray pulsars have a pulse fraction of up to 20 keV. A decrease in the pulse fraction is followed by an increase in the energy level.

The average spectrum of 1E 1145.1-6141 does not show any overt absorption features. The researchers estimated the luminosity of the pulsar at 5 undecillion erg/s.

More information: Manoj Ghising, Mohammed Tobrej, Binay Rai, Ruchi Tamang, Bikash Chandra Paul, NuSTAR observation of X-ray pulsar 1E 1145.1-6141. arXiv:2210.05163v1 [astro-ph.HE], arxiv.org/abs/2210.05163

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