PROBING THE NATURE OF THE UNIDENTIFIED TeV GAMMA-RAY SOURCE HESS J0632+057 WITH SWIFT
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)
- School of Physics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4 (Ireland)
- School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT (United Kingdom)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 (United States)
- Physics Department, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2T8 (Canada)
New generation TeV gamma-ray telescopes have discovered many new sources, including several enigmatic unidentified TeV objects. HESS J0632+057 is a particularly interesting unidentified TeV source since: it is a point source, it has a possible hard-spectrum X-ray counterpart and a positionally consistent Be star, it has evidence of long-term very high energy gamma-ray flux variability, and it is postulated to be a newly detected TeV/X-ray binary. We have obtained Swift X-ray telescope observations of this source from MJD 54857 to 54965, in an attempt to ascertain its nature and to investigate the hypothesis that it is a previously unknown X-ray/TeV binary. Variability and spectral properties similar to those of the other three known X-ray/TeV binaries have been observed, with measured flux increases by factors of {approx}3. X-ray variability is present on multiple timescales including days to months; however, no clear signature of periodicity is present on the timescales probed by these data. If binary modulation is present and dominating the measured variability, then the period of the orbit is likely to be {>=}54 days (half of this campaign), or it has a shorter period with a variable degree of flux modulation on successive high states. If the two high states measured to date are due to binary modulation, then the favored period is approximately 35-40 days. More observations are required to determine if this object is truly a binary system and to determine the extent that the measured variability is due to inter-orbit flaring effects or periodic binary modulation.
- OSTI ID:
- 21301434
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 708, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/708/1/L52; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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