Search for gamma-ray emission from four accreting millisecond pulsars with Fermi/LAT
- Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 80 Nandan Road, Shanghai 200030 (China)
We report our search for γ-ray emission in the energy range from 100 MeV to 300 GeV from four accreting millisecond pulsars (AMPs), SAX J1808.4–3658, IGR J00291+5934, XTE J1814–338, and XTE J0929–314. The data are from four-year observations carried out by the Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. The AMPs were not detected, and the γ-ray luminosity upper limits we obtain are 5.1 × 10{sup 33} erg s{sup –1} for SAX J1808.4–3658, 2.1 × 10{sup 33} erg s{sup –1} for IGR J00291+5934, 1.2 × 10{sup 34} erg s{sup –1} for XTE J1814–338, and 2.2 × 10{sup 33} erg s{sup –1} for XTE J0929–314. We compare our results with γ-ray irradiation luminosities required for producing optical modulations seen from the companions in the AMPs, which has been suggested by Takata et al., and our upper limits have excluded γ-ray emission as the heating source in these systems except XTE J0929–314, the upper limit of which is not deep enough. Our results also do not support the model proposed by Takata et al. that relatively strong γ-ray emission could arise from the outer gap of a high-mass neutron star controlled by the photon-photon pair creation for the AMPs. Two AMPs, SAX J1808.4–3658 and IGR J00291+5934, have measurements of their spin-down rates, and we derive the upper limits of their γ-ray conversion efficiencies, which are 57% and 3%, respectively. We discuss the implications to the AMP systems by comparing the efficiency upper limit values with that of 20 γ-ray millisecond pulsars (MSP) detected by Fermi and the newly discovered transitional MSP binary J1023+0038.
- OSTI ID:
- 22342050
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 769, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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