Tag Archives: transients

How to launch a jet

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Whenever a gigantic explosion occurs in the cosmos, or an astrophysical object guzzles up matter from its surroundings, so-called jets are shot out: collimated streams of plasma that hurdle through space at speeds of hundreds of thousands to billions of kilometers per hour. As jets carry enormous energy and travel very large distances, they may significantly impact their cosmic environment, for instance enriching it with exotic chemical elements or compressing gas clouds to the extent that these start to contract to form new stars. Moreover, a jet might carry away significant amounts of energy, mass and rotation, from the object that launches it hence changing its properties and evolution.

Despite their prominent role in shaping our universe, how jets are actually produced has puzzled astronomers for over a century, ever since the first recording of an astrophysical jet in 1918. The answer to this seemingly basic question is, however, essential to fully understand the wide impact of jets. This is because the launch mechanism determines the physical properties of the jet, such as its power, speed, and composition. For neutron stars, pressing questions are whether the star’s magnetic field is involved in launching jets and to what extent their jet production mechanism resembles that of black holes.

A rather unique neutron star to study the role of the stellar magnetic field on jet production is one with the stage name The Rapid Burster (formally called MXB 1730-335). It is thought for this neutron star there is a tug-of-war between its magnetic field, pushing gas outwards, and its accretion disk through which gas flows from its companion star flows towards it. During so-called Type-II X-ray bursts, flashes of bright X-ray emission that last seconds to minutes, the magnetic field is thought to be temporarily pushed inwards, allowing a sudden strong increase in the gas supply to the neutron star. Seeing if, and how, the radio jet responds to these Type-II bursts thus provides an excellent setting to study the role of the stellar magnetic field in launching jets.

As with the thermonuclear burst / jet experiment, it was again an exciting challenge to design and execute the observing campaign to study the jet of the Rapid Burster. This is because this neutron star is dormant most of its time and only occasionally gobbles up gas from its companion star. Luckily, the Rapid Burster is a rare case where its meal times are rather regular, allowing to predict when a new episode of activity is about to occur. Making use of this, we devised a strategy that involved 4 different observatories. First, we monitored our target for signs of increased X-ray activity through the MAXI satellite, which is continuously scanning the sky in X-rays. When it detected the onset of a new accretion outburst, we started to monitor the source with the Swift satellite for accurate flux measurements and chart its X-ray bursts. As soon as Swift showed us that the Rapid Burster had become bright enough and had started showing type-II bursts, we initiated pre-arranged observations carried out simultaneously with the Very Large Array (radio) and Integral (X-rays).

During our observing campaign, the Rapid Burster showed both short, rapidly recurring Type-II bursts, as well as a much longer one that was followed by a burst-free episode. Interestingly, we witnessed that the jet of the neutron star was solidly on when displaying the short bursts, but appeared to switch off after the longer Type-II burst. This could point towards a crucial role for the stellar magnetic field in launching jets, at least for this particular neutron star. Having conducted this successful pilot experiment, we can confirm this hypothesis by conducting a more extensive campaign to catch more longer Type-II bursts and study the associated jet response. Comparing these results a more systematic radio study of other neutron stars that do not display Type-II bursts will further allow to understand the role of the magnetic field.

van den Eijnden, Robins, Sharma, Sánchez-Fernández, Russell, Degenaar, Miller-Jones, Maccarone 2024, MNRAS 533, 756: The variable radio jet of the accreting neutron star the Rapid Burster

Paper link: ADS

Results of the simultaneous VLA radio (top) and Integral X-ray (bottom) observations of the Rapid Burster in 2020. The jet seemed to on during episodes where short successive Type-II X-ray bursts were occurring (epochs I, III and IV; top label), but switched off after a stronger/longer Type-II X-ray burst (epoch II).

Gone with the wind

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The discovery of a persistent UV outflow from a neutron star.


X-ray binaries consist of a neutron star or a black hole that are accompanied by another star (e.g. one like our Sun, a red giant, or a white dwarf). Neutron stars and black holes are not friendly neighbors, however, and will relentlessly rip gap from their companion and swallow it. This cannibalistic process is called accretion. At the same time, some of the gas inswirling is propelled back into space through dense winds or highly collimated jets.

The most common signatures of outflowing material from astronomical objects are associated with “warm” gas. Despite this, only winds of “hot” or “cold” gas have been observed in X-ray binaries… until now! In this new study, we observed the recent accretion eruption of the X-ray binary known as Swift J1858 with a menagerie of ground-based and space-based observatories, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton satellite (XMM), the European Southern Observatory Organisation’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) located in Chile and the Spanish Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) located at La Palma (Canary Islands).

The results of our campaign, which was a joint effort of a team of researchers from 11 countries and was published in the journal Nature, showed persistent signatures of a warm wind at ultraviolet wavelengths occurring at the same time as signatures of a cold wind at optical wavelengths and hints of a hot wind at X-ray wavelengths. This is the first time that winds from an X-ray binary have been seen across different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. This new discovery provides key information about the messy eating patterns of these cosmic cookie monsters. It allows us, for instance, to better understand how much gas is blown away in winds and by what mechanism winds are produced.

Designing the an ambitious observing campaign, built around the best telescopes on Earth and in space, was a huge challenge. This is mainly because it requires coordinating different observatories located at different parts of the Earth and space to look at your target all at the same time. So, it is incredibly exciting that all this work has paid off and allowed us to make a key discovery that would not have been possible otherwise.

Some press coverage: Independent

Castro-Segura et al. 2022, Nature 603, 52: A persistent ultraviolet outflow from an accreting neutron star binary transient

Paper link: ADS

Artist’s impression of a wind blown from the inner part of the accretion disk around a neutron star devouring gas from a companion. Image credit: Gabriel Pérez (IAC).

Volatile flickering…

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…of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole.

At the heart of our Milky Way galaxy lurks a supermassive black hole. It is called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* for short, and contains as much mass as 4 million Suns together. Our Milky Way is not unique in this respect: it is thought that every galaxy in our Universe harbors a supermassive black hole in its center. As they are notorious for, black holes suck up material from their surroundings, but they also blast large amounts of gas and energy into space. By doing so, the monstrous black holes in the centers of galaxies play an important role in how galaxies evolve over cosmic timescales and also how large-scale structures formed in our Universe. Studying the table manners of supermassive black holes is therefore a very active area of research.

The material that is irrevocably dragged towards a black hole lights up and provides us with a measure of how (much) the black hole is eating. Our very own supermassive black hole does not appear to have a large appetite as we see relatively little light coming from its surroundings compared to other supermassive black holes. However, roughly once a day we see a flare of (X-ray) emission coming from the position of Sgr A*. Despite that this flickering has long been known, we do not know yet what is causing it. Possibly, these are instances that the supermassive black hole is taking a gollup of material for instance a comet or some other small astrophysical object. Another possibility is that magnetic fields that must be treading the material swirling around Sgr A* are playing up.

Over the past two decades there have been many different efforts to understand the flickering behavior of Sgr A*, for instance by studying the energy of flares, to map out the distribution of flare properties, or attempting to constrain how often they occur. A challenge for the latter is that the flares are relatively sporadic. It therefore requires a lot of staring with telescopes to collect a sufficiently large number of flares to be able to draw firm conclusions on their recurrence rate. Most telescopes do not allow for such studies, either because it is technically not possible to take long stares at a single point in the sky, because their detectors do not have sufficient angular resolution to separate Sgr A* from the many nearby stars, or because the competition for telescope time is so high that long stares can usually not be granted.

The Neil Gehrels Swift observatory, shortly called Swift, is a satellited that was launched by NASA in 2005 and was specifically designed to be able to rapidly point to different positions in the sky. Because of this rapid slewing capability, it is no trouble for Swift to very frequently visit a certain position in the sky, hence effectively build up a long stare at that position. Taking advantage of this exceptional capability, Swift has been taking brief (about 20-min long) snapshots of the center of our Milky Way galaxy with its onboard X-ray telescope nearly every day since 2006. Having accumulated over 2000 X-ray pictures of Sgr A* by now, these Swift data provide a truly unique opportunity to study its flickering behavior over a 15 year baseline.

In the summer of 2019, Alexis Andes, an undergraduate student in El Salvador at the time, came to Amsterdam as part of the ASPIRE program. This program provides research opportunities for students that cannot easily study astrophysics in their home country. Alexis’ research project was to perform a statistical analysis of Swift’s X-ray data of Sgr A* to understand if its flickering behavior is constant over time. Excitingly, this turned out not to be the case! Our study revealed that there are sequences of years in which our supermassive black hole is frequently flickering but also stretches of years in which it is much more quiet. It was not known before that Sgr A* changes its behavior in this way.

Our results do not provide a conclusive answer on the cause of the flickering just jet. However, we noted that years of enhanced flickering seemed to occur after orbiting stars closely passed Sgr A*, such as the object G2 did a few years ago. Possibly, this can stir up the gas swirling around the supermassive black hole, causing it to be more restless for some period of time. While this is highly speculative at present, we can test this idea with continued Swift monitoring of Sgr A*: we predict that the flickering will become more quiet again within 1-2 years as the gas flow settles again after G2’s passage. So stay tuned!

Press release (English): NOVA

Andes, van den Eijnden, Degenaar, Evans, Chatterjee, Reynolds, Miller, Kennea, Wijnands, Markoff, Altamirano, Heinke, Bahramian, Ponti, Haggard 2022, MNRAS 510, 285: A Swift study of long-term changes in the X-ray flaring properties of Sagittarius A*

Paper link: ADS

Three-color accumulated Swift X-ray Telescope Image of the Galactic center (2006-2014).

To be or not to be superfluid

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Neutron stars have masses up to about 2.5 times the mass of our Sun, but their radii are nearly 50 thousand times smaller. This means that the matter that makes up neutron stars must be squeezed incredibly close together. In fact, neutron stars present the densest observable form of matter in the Universe. While in black holes matter is even more tightly packed, it is all hidden behind an event horizon and hence beyond our reach. For neutron stars, however, we can observe radiation from their surface and use that to infer what they look like on the inside. Neutron stars allow us to study how matter behaves when it is crushed to enormously high densities, conditions that we cannot replicate and study in laboratories on Earth.

Neutron stars are thought to have a 1-km thick solid crust, below which matter occurs in liquid form. It is generally thought that this liquid must be superfluid, meaning that it swirls around freely without experiencing any friction. On Earth, such fascinating, odd behavior is observed when liquid helium is cooled down to extremely low temperatures of about -270 degrees Celsius. There are, however, many uncertainties about how a superfluid works at the millions of degrees Celsius temperatures inside neutron stars. As a result, it is far from understood what the superfluid properties of neutron stars are exactly. This is very important to establish, as it likely has a profound effect on how various neutron star properties, such as their magnetic field strength, spin and interior temperature, evolve over their lifetime. Moreover, several observable phenomena of neutron stars, such as occasional distortions in their rotation called glitches or sudden cracking of their crust analogous to Earth quakes, likely depend on the detailed properties of their interior superfluid.

Since we cannot perform experiments on Earth that teach us how superfluids inside neutron stars may work, we need to reverse the problem. One promising way to do this is to track how a neutron star cools down after it has been heated up by gobbling up gas from a companion star. We call this cannibalistic action accretion and often this happens in spurts that we call  outbursts. The superfluid properties of its interior should influence both the extend to which the neutron star can be heated during accretion outbursts, and how its temperature then subsequently decreases when accretion stops and hence there is no more heat generation. One such neutron star that we previously established to be heated and subsequently cooling down is called HETE J1900.1-2455. In a previous study we tracked its temperature decrease and our modeling suggested that the neutron star would cool further. After having waited a few years, we took a new observation of the source with the Chandra X-ray satellite to verify this.

Chandra pointed towards our neutron star for over half a day and surprisingly saw almost nothing! HETE J1900.1-2455 turned out to have cooled so much that it was hardly generating any detectable X-ray emission, even for the very sensitive X-ray detector of Chandra. In the 16 hours that Chandra started at it, a mere 5 X-ray light particles were capture from the neutron star. In order words, only every 3 hours was the Chandra detector hit by an X-ray light particle from HETE J1900.1-2455. Perhaps somewhat counter-intuitive, the fact that we detected so little light from the source actually provides us with very interesting constraints on its interior properties. Performing a rigorous and conservative analysis (based on those 5 light particles!) we inferred the likely temperature of the neutron star and performed highly advanced simulations that take into account the physical properties of neutron stars, including their interior superfluid.

Our analysis revealed that the low temperature of HETE J1900.1-2455 must imply that it is able to cool its interior extremely rapidly. Two exciting possibilities that would allow for this is either that the neutron star is very massive or that a large fraction of its core is not superfluid. The latter option would contrast the general belief and would have profound implications for our understanding of many observable properties of neutron stars. The former option would be a very important finding because the most massive neutron stars put the strongest constraints on the behavior of ultra-dense matter.  Although both options are equally exciting, our current observations do not allow us to distinguish between the two. However, because of the significant science impact, Chandra will again point towards HETE J1900.1-2455 to allow us to obtain a new temperature measurement. This time, it will not stare at the neutron star for 16 hours, but for 6 full days!! If its temperature remained stable, we will then collect 50 X-ray light particles and be able to obtain a much more reliable temperature estimate. If it cooled further, however, we might not see any light at all. Ironically, the latter case would be the most exciting outcome. Part of the data has recently been taken and the remaining observations will come in soon. I can wait to find out what we will (not) see in those new Chandra observations!

Degenaar, Page, van den Eijnden, Beznogov, Renolds, Wijnands 2021, MNRAS 508, 882: Constraining the properties of dense neutron star cores: the case of the low-mass X-ray binary HETE J1900.1-2455

Paper link: ADS

Observations (green points) and simulations (colored curves) of the temperature evolution of the neutron star in HETE J1900 during and after its 11-year long accretion outburst. Whereas we derive an ultra-low temperature of around 35 eV from our 2018 observation, the simulations predict that the neutron star may cool even further to an all-time low of about 15 eV.

Changing emission mechanisms

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X-ray binaries, in which a neutron star or black hole swallows gas from a companion star, have been known since the dawn of X-ray astronomy in the 1960s. With decades of studies, using many different space-based and ground-based telescopes across the electromagnetic spectrum, we have learned many things about how neutron stars and black holes accrete gas. Nearly all of this knowledge has been assembled for stages during which X-ray binaries are rapidly accreting gas, making them shine bright at all wavelengths and hence can easily be studied. However, most X-ray binaries spend only a fraction of their time being bright and rapidly accreting; the far majority of their time their gas consumption occurs at a very low level. Because X-ray binaries are much dimmer when accreting slowly, it is much more challenging to study them. Our standard  models predict that accretion proceeds very differently at low rates, but we have hardly any observational constraints to test and further develop models of low-level accretion.

There are many different components in an X-ray binary that emit electromagnetic radiation. One of the prime emission components is the accretion disk that, depending on its physical properties like its temperature, radiates at X-ray, UV, optical and near-infrared wavelengths. At low accretion rates, however, theory predicts that this disk evaporates into a more extended hot flow that may emit energy at the same wavelengths as the disk. Apart from the accretion stream, be it a disk or a hot flow, the companion star also emits UV, optical and near-infrared emission  (depending on what type of star it is and whether it is being irradiated by the accretion flow), whereas X-ray binaries also launch jets that can be detected at radio and near-infrared wavelengths, but possibly also in the optical, UV and X-ray bands too. Disentangling the different emission components, and finding which one(s) dominate(s) the total observed emission, can be a powerful way to obtain details about the accretion process. This is not an easy task, however, because for each different wavelength we (generally) need different telescopes and it’s very challenging to coordinate different observatories.

The Swift satellite is a very important observatory to study X-ray binaries. This is for two reasons. Firstly, it is a relatively small satellite that can easily maneuver around, allowing us to take frequent snapshots of sources (which is not possible for bigger satellites). Secondly, Swift carries both an X-ray telescope and a UV/optical telescope, which can observe an astrophysical object at the same time. Combined with its good sensitivity, this makes that Swift is a powerful tool to study how the accretion flow in X-ray binaries changes when it moves (quickly!) from high to low accretion rates. We attempted such a dedicated study for the well-known neutron star X-ray binary Aquila X-1 (aka Aql X-1).

Using Swift data from the NASA archives that covered three different accretion outbursts of Aql X-1, we studied how the X-ray, UV and optical emission changed as the source evolved between high and low accretion rates. We found that the X-ray and UV/optical emission always change together, but that this happens in a different manner when Aql X-1 is bright than when it is fading. This implies that the dominant mechanism producing UV and optical emission changes during the decay of an outburst, as is expected from accretion theory. It might be a hint that an accretion disk is changing into a hot flow, or that the properties of the accretion disk are changing otherwise. Moreover, we found that the UV and optical emission behaves differently during the rise of an outburst than during the decay. This suggests that the accretion flow may have different properties at the start and the end of an outburst. This investigating has exposed some interesting behavior that warrants follow-up by performing similar studies for other X-ray binaries or using additional observatories.

López-Navas, Degenaar, Parikh, Hernández Santisteban, van den Eijnden 2020, MNRAS 493, 940: The connection between the UV/optical and X-ray emission in the neutron star low-mass X-ray binary Aql X-1

Paper link: ADS

14U_fits

The X-ray and UV flux of Aql X-1 over an entire outburst. It can be seen that the emission at the two wavelengths is coupled in a different manner when the source is bright than when it is faint. Moreover, the UV flux is fainter during the decay (yellow/green points) than during the rise (blue/purple points) of the outburst.

Puffing up the accretion flow

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X-ray binaries are most easily studied when they are devouring a lot of gas and therefore produce bright radiation at X-ray, UV, optical, infrared and radio wavelengths. During such outburst episodes, the gas that is being stripped off from the companion forms a disk that swirls around the black hole or neutron star. We think that this accretion disk extends very close to the cannibal star, maybe even touching it.

During quiescent episodes, X-ray binaries are consuming much less gas and are therefore orders of magnitude dimmer at all wavelengths. Current theories of accretion prescribe that during quiescence, the accretion disk cannot extend close to the black hole or the neutron star and must lie (tens of) thousands of kilometers away. In between the edge of this disk and the compact star, the gas flow might be very hot and vertically extended. However, because this gas is very tenuous and not producing strong radiation, it is very hard to test this idea with observations.

Accretion theory thus predicts that as an X-ray binary starts to fade from outburst to quiescence, the geometry of the accretion flow is strongly changing. However, it is highly challenging to measure this because 1) it’s not predictable exactly when X-ray binaries transition to quiescence, 2) once they do, the transition happens very rapidly, typically on a timescale of 1-2 weeks, and is therefore easy to miss, and 3) as X-ray binaries decay into quiescence they become increasingly dim and therefore long/sensitive observations are needed in order to study the properties of the accretion stream. Ready to take up this challenge, we recently designed an ambitious observing campaign aimed to reveal the changing accretion flow in an X-ray binary called 4U 1608-52.

One powerful way to measure the location of the inner edge of an accretion disk is X-ray reflection. This produces prominent emission features at certain X-ray energies that can be studied with sensitive X-ray telescope. NuSTAR is one of the telescopes that is optimally suited to study X-ray reflection. In a previous study, we observed the X-ray binary 4U 1608-52 during one of its accretion outbursts. Our NuSTAR observation revealed a beautiful X-ray reflection spectrum that allowed us to determine that the accretion disk was extending very close to the neutron star. Taking advantage of the fact that 1) this X-ray binary goes into outburst once every few years (opposed to some sources for which we have observed only 1 outburst over 5 decades), and 2) it produces a very strong reflection spectrum, we designed an observing campaign to capture the source again with NuSTAR, but then at a factor ~10 lower luminosity. The main aim was to use the reflection spectrum to determine if with this change in brightness, the accretion geometry changes a lot.

When our target 4U 1608-52 was seen to enter a new accretion outburst in 2018, we closely monitored how its brightness evolved by looking at the data obtained with the Japanese MAXI X-ray telescope that is installed on the International Space Station. Once MAXI showed that the X-ray brightness of 4U 1608-52 was decreasing, we performed observations with the much more sensitive Swift and NICER telescopes. This allowed us to continue watching our target once it became too faint to be detected with MAXI. We analyzed each new Swift observation immediately after it was performed and tried to predict how the brightness of our target would decay onward. With a few days lead time, we then triggered our NuSTAR observation, hoping that it would observe our target at exactly the right time.

After an intense 2 weeks of watching 4U 1608-52 closely every day, we succeeded to have NuSTAR point to our target at exactly the right time. Interestingly, our new NuSTAR observation showed that with a factor ~10 change in brightness, the reflection spectrum completely disappeared. We think that this is because the accretion flow is changing from a (flat) disk into a hot (spherical) structure. This constitutes one of the very few observations that supports standard accretion models, so we are very excited about these results.

van den Eijnden, Degenaar, Ludlam, Parikh, Miller, Wijnands, Gendreau, Arzoumanian, Chakrabarty, Bult, 2020, MNRAS 493, 1318: A strongly changing accretion morphology during the outburst decay of the neutron star X-ray binary 4U 1608-52

Paper link: ADS

4U1608_combi

NICER and NuSTAR spectra of 4U1608-52. The left panel shows the data obtained during several instances along the 2018 outburst. Data obtained during the 2014 outburst is shown for comparison. A prominent feature can be seen between 5 and 10 keV that is referred to as the iron (Fe-K) line and gives information about the accretion geometry. The right panel shows that this emission feature disappears during the decay of the outburst, which shows that there is a dramatic change in the accretion flow.

 

 

 

 

A mysterious source of heat

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Understanding how neutron stars look like on the inside, i.e. what their structure is and what they are made of, is one of the main challenges of modern astrophysics. There are several different ways through which we try to unravel this. One avenue is to measure how the temperature of neutron stars evolve after they have been eating.

Humans gain energy by eating and so do neutron stars. The meal of a neutron star consists of gas that is supplied by a companion star. By consuming this gas, the outer layers of a neutron star get heated up. Once they stop eating, this gained energy is  radiated away and therefore the neutron star cools down again. How hot neutron stars become during their dinners, and how quickly they cool afterwards, depends strongly on their interior properties.

We use sensitive X-ray telescopes to measure how the temperature of neutron stars evolve after they have been consuming gas from their companion. Such studies have revealed that many neutron stars are much more strongly heated during their dinners than is predicted by theoretical models. This is referred to as the shallow heating problem, because the heat appears to be generated just below the surface of the neutron star. It has puzzled us for over a decade now where this shallow heat comes from.

In a previous study, we proposed that the well-known neutron star X-1 in the constellation Aquila, aka Aql X-1, could provide the key to unravel the mysterious source of shallow heat. This neutron star feasts off its companion about once a year and its heating and cooling can thus be studied and compared after multiple dinners.

Using the Chandra and Swift satellites, we studied Aql X-1 after three meals (in 2011, 2013 and 2016) that were very similar. Since the neutron star consumed approximately the same amount of gas during these three episodes, we expected that it would have been heated to similar extend and hence cool in the same way. However, we found that the temperature of the neutron star was strikingly different after its 2016 dinner than after the other two. Within our current understanding of heating and cooling of neutron stars, it is very difficult to understand why its temperature should be so different.

Instead of unraveling the mysterious source of shallow heat, our dedicated study of Aql X-1 seems to have further complicated the picture. We thus have to go back to the drawing board to think of a new experiment to find out what causes the shallow heat inside of neutron stars.

Degenaar, Ootes, Page et al. 2019, MNRAS in press: Crust cooling of the neutron star in Aql X-1: Different depth and magnitude of shallow heating during similar accretion outbursts

Paper link: ADS

aqlx1_cool_3outbursts

The observed temperature of the neutron star in Aql X-1 after three different outbursts. Although the outbursts were very similar and we thus expected the neutron star to heat up and cool down in the same way, the temperature evolution after the 2016 outburst (black stars) was very different from that seen after the 2011 (red circles) and 2013 (blue squares) outbursts.

Don’t overfeed the neutron star

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The laws of physics dictate that there is a maximum amount of food that neutron stars and black holes can digest. Once you reach the so-called Eddington limit, the radiation that is produced by the consumption of gas becomes so strong that it blows away the in-falling material. Theoretically, it is therefore predicted that if you overfeed a neutron star or a black hole, strong outflows are produced: in the regime of super-Eddington accretion, we expect both jets and winds to be created. Jets are usually detected at radio wavelengths, whereas winds often reveal themselves as narrow absorption lines in high-resolution X-ray spectra.

There are a number of neutron stars and black holes identified that are likely accreting at very high rates. Most of these are located in other galaxies, and referred to as ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), because the high rate of food consumption makes them very bright X-ray emitters. For several of these ULXs, signatures of disk winds have been detected. A few other ULXs have radio bubbles around them that suggest that these objects are producing strong jets. However, to date there is no ULX known that is known to produce both winds and jets at the same time. It therefore remains to be established if super-Eddington accretion indeed causes both types of outflows.

Swift J0243.6+6124 is an accreting neutron star that is located in our Milky Way galaxy and was discovered in late 2017 when it suddenly started to feed of its companion star. Following its discovery, the object kept brightening until after a few weeks it reached super-Eddington accretion rates. We previously detected a jet from this neutron star using the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope. Following this detection, and known that the source was in the super-Eddington regime, we also requested high-resolution X-ray observations with the Chandra telescope with the aim to search for the presence of a disk wind.

Detecting a disk wind in Swift J0243.6+6124 was not an easy task because it was so overwhelmingly bright that it was causing issues for all X-ray satellites: just as the NS cannot eat fast enough, our X-ray detectors couldn’t process the light received from the source fast enough. Luckily, Chandra could be operated in a very special setting that allowed us to look at the source anyway. Excitingly, the spectra that we obtained with Chandra contained a number of narrow absorption lines that can arise from a disk wind. The properties of these absorption lines suggest that the wind is blown away from the neutron star at a dazzling speed of 20% of the speed of light: a speed of about 200 million kilometers per hour! Similar wind speeds have been measured for ULXs in other galaxies.

Our Chandra and VLA observations thus revealed that indeed jets and winds are produced at the same time in the super-Eddington accretion regime, just like theory predicts.

van den Eijnden, Degenaar, Schulz et al. 2019, MNRAS 487, 4355: Chandra reveals a possible ultrafast outflow in the super-Eddington Be/X-ray binary Swift J0243.6+6124 

Paper link: ADS

Spacecraft labled new 2019

Schematic overview of the Chandra X-ray satellite, with which we performed this research. Image credit: NASA

A new class of jet sources

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Accretion is a fundamental physical process that plays an important role at all spatial scales encountered in the universe. Whenever accretion occurs, it appears to be inevitable that jets are produced; collimated beams of matter and energy that are spit into space by the astrophysical object that is accreting. For decades, strongly magnetized neutron stars stood out as the only objects that accreted and did not seem to produce jets. This led to the paradigm that their strong magnetic fields prevent the formation of jets. Earlier this year, we made a ground-breaking discovery that disproves this.

Despite decades of jet studies of X-ray binaries, strikingly, no radio emission was ever detected from accreting neutron stars that have strong magnetic fields. For decades, it was therefore assumed that these objects do not produce radio emission because they are incapable of producing jets. Originally set out to provide more stringent upper limits on the radio emission, we exploited the upgraded sensitivity of the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope to perform deep radio observations of two strongly magnetic neutron stars, Her X-1 and GX 1+4. Somewhat surprisingly, we detected radio from both objects for this first time. Though very exciting, we were not able to prove that these  detections pointed to the presence of a jet, since other emission processes could produce the observed radio emission. Nevertheless, this motivated us to dig deeper into the question if strongly magnetic neutron stars could produce jets after all.

In late 2017, we were fortunate to run into an ideal test case. A previously unknown X-ray binary suddenly exhibited an accretion outburst, making it shine very bright in X-rays. When it was discovered that the accreting object in this newly discovered source, dubbed Swift J0243.6+6124, was a strongly magnetic neutron star, we requested observations with the VLA to search for radio emission from a jet. And this is exactly what we found.

Our observations of Swift J0243.6+6124 unambiguously proved that we were watching an evolving radio jet. Firstly, we clearly observed a coupling between the radio emission and the X-ray emission, as is seen in black holes and weakly magnetic neutron stars. Secondly, by performing the radio emission in multiple frequency bands, we were able to measure the radio spectral index and evolution therein, which too followed exactly the same behavior as seen for other X-ray binaries. Our observations thus disproved the long-lasting paradigm that strongly magnetic neutron stars cannot produce jets, which has far-reaching consequences.

This discovery opens up a completely new regime to study astrophysical jets. In particular is can shed new light on the open question how these outflows are launched. This is because strongly magnetic neutrons stars have a completely different accretion geometry than black holes and weakly magnetic neutron stars, because their strong magnetic field pushes the accretion disk out to hundreds of kilometers. Any jet launching model must thus be able to explain that material is accelerated into a jet from such large distances. Moreover, several models prescribe that the power of a jet should scale with the rotation rate of the accreting object. This has been very difficult to test with black holes, because their spin rates cannot be unambiguously measured, or with weakly magnetic neutron stars, because these exhibit only a very narrow range in spin rates. Neutron stars with strong magnetic fields, however, are observed with a very wide range of accurately measured rotation rates, from sub-seconds to thousands of seconds. This finally allows to test the predicted correlation between that the radio brightness and the spin rate.

Because of the important scientific impact for jet studies, our results are published in the October issue of Nature (2018). Following up on our discovery, we have already started to perform a large,  systematic radio survey of accreting strongly magnetized neutron stars. The important next steps are to test if, and how, these jets are coupled to the properties of the accretion flow, and if we can detect any dependence of the jet properties on the spin of the neutron star. Stay tuned.

van den Eijnden, Degenaar, Russell, Wijnands, Miller-Jones, Sivakoff, Hernández Santisteban 2018, Nature 562, 233: An evolving jet from a strongly magnetized accreting X-ray pulsar

Paper link: ADS
Selection of press items: NOVA and NRAO
Explanatory movie (English): youtube

lc_swj0432_short

Discovery of a radio jet launched by the strongly magnetic neutron star in Swift J0243.6+6124. Shown is the X-ray light curve from Swift/BAT in black together with our radio observations from VLA in red. After an initial non-detection in the radio, we detected the jet emission during the peak of the outburst and watched it fade in tandem with the decrease in X-rays.

New clues to an old mystery?

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MXB 1730-335, also known as “the rapid burster”, is a neutron star that is located in the Galactic globular cluster Liller 1 and swallows gas from a companion star. It is infamous for displaying a peculiar phenomena called type-II X-ray bursts. These brief, bright flashes of X-ray emission are likely caused by a short-lived increase in the amount of gas that falls onto the neutron star, but over 40 years after the discovery the exact nature of these tantalizing X-ray flashes remains unknown. One of the puzzles is that there are only two neutron stars in our entire Galaxy that exhibit these flashes; the other is “the bursting pulsar” GRO J1744-28.

The rapid burster exhibits accretion outbursts that lasts a few weeks and recur about every 100 days. It so happened that in 2015 October an outburst was anticipated at a time that both NuSTAR and XMM-Newton could observe the object. This provided the unique opportunity to leverage the strengths of both instruments — high sensitivity at soft photon energies (0.3-3 keV) for XMM-Newton and high sensitivity to reflection features for NuSTAR — to study this peculiar neutron star. To this end, rapid-burster expert and former Amsterdam/SRON PhD student Tullio Bagnoli designed a novel observing campaign with Swift to catch a new outburst and trigger observations with NuSTAR and XMM-Newton accordingly. Jakob analyzed these data and may have found new clues to the old, unsolved mystery of the origin of type-II X-ray bursts.

Accretion disks normally extend close to the surface of the neutron star. However, analysis of reflected X-ray light in the rapid burster reveals that the inner accretion disk is strongly truncated; it lies about a factor of 5 further away from the neutron star than is typically seen in other objects. A plausible explanation for this finding is that the rapid burster has magnetic field strong enough to prevent the accretion disk from coming closer to the neutron star. Since we obtained a similar result for GRO J1744-28, this could indicate that the type-II phenomenon is related to the magnetic field of the neutron stars.

van den Eijnden, Bagnoli, Degenaar et al. 2017, MNRAS Letters 466, L98: A strongly truncated inner accretion disc in the Rapid Burster

Paper link: ADS
Press release: ESA
Dutch news article: astronomie.nl

liller1_gems_gemini

Near-infrared (J,K) images of the Galactic globular cluster Liller 1 obtained with the GeMS camera mounted on the 8-m Gemini telescope in Chile. The inset shows a zoom of the core of the cluster, spanning 1.9 light year across. Image credit: F.R. Ferraro/E. Dalessandro (Cosmic-Lab / University of Bologna, Italy)