A diagnostic of the orbital spectrum of LS 5039 with Fermi-LAT

LS 5039 is a well-known γ-ray binary system which consists of an unknown compact object and a massive companion O star. It shows rather stable emissions at high energies over years and hence serves as an ideal laboratory to investigate the emission mechanism for such peculiar systems which emit prominent γ-rays. To this end, we take the orbital phase resolved energy spectrum as observed by Fermi-LAT over 10 years. We divide the orbit into four orbital phases, each with an orbital phase range of 0.25,centered at 0.00, 0.25, 0.50 and 0.75 respectively, where the phase 0.0 is the periastron and phase 0.5 is the apastron. The phases around 0.25 and 0.75 are symmetric and hence are supposed to have identical local acceleration environment. The spectral analysis shows that the Fermi-LAT spectra are largely different from these two symmetric orbital phases: the emission from orbital phase 0.25 turns out to be significantly stronger than that from 0.75. This result does not fit a scenario that γ-rays are Doppler boosted emission from bow shock tails if LS 5039 has a shock configuration similar to PSR B1259-63, and indicates that the inverse Compton scatterings between the shock accelerated plasma and the stellar particle environment is the underline procedure. We also find that the previous report for a disappearance of the orbital modulation at 3–20 GeV is due to the similar spectral turn-over energies of the different orbital phases. The spectral properties of periastron and apastron regions are addressed in the context of the measurements in phase regions around 0.25 and 0.75.

Spectral and Timing Analysis of the Black Hole Transient MAXI J1631–479 During its 2019 Outburst Observed with Insight-HXMT

We report spectral and timing analysis of the black hole transient MAXI J1631–479 during the hard intermediate state of its 2019 outburst from the Insight-Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope(Insight-HXMT)observations.We find that the energy dependence of the type-C quasi-periodic oscillation(QPO)frequency evolves with time:during the initial rise of a small flare(~MJD 58526.0-58527.1),the QPO frequency increases with increasing energy from~1 to~100 ke V,and then the frequency remains constant after MJD 58527.1.We discover a possible new phenomenon of Fe line’s QPO frequency jump that has never been observed for other black hole transients:during the small flare,the QPO frequency around the Fe line energy is higher than any other energy band,with the frequency difference Δf=0.25±0.08 Hz between 5.5–7.5 ke V and other energy bands.The spectral analysis shows that the evolution of QPOs is related to the equivalent width of the narrow Fe line,and its equivalent width increases during this small flare.We propose that the QPO frequency difference results from the differential precession of a vertically extended jet,and the higher QPO frequency of Fe line could be caused by the layered jet when the jet scale increases.At the same time,the evolution of QPOs is related to the accretion rate,while the energy dependence of QPOs supports the existence of deceleration in the vertically distributed jet.

The GeV emission of PSR B1259–63 during its last three periastron passages observed by Fermi-LAT

PSR B1259–63 is a γ-ray emitting high mass X-ray binary system, in which the compact object is a millisecond pulsar.The system has an orbital period of 1236.7 d and shows peculiar γ-ray flares when the neutron star moves out of the stellar disk of the companion star.The γ-ray flare events were firstly discovered by using Fermi-LAT around the 2010 periastron passage, which was repeated for the 2014 and 2017 periastron passages.We analyze the Fermi-LAT data for all the three periastron passages and found that in each flare the energy spectrum can be represented well by a simple power law.The γ-ray light curves show that in 2010 and 2014 after each periastron there are two main flares,but in 2017 there are four flares including one precursor about 10 d after the periastron passage.The first main flares in 2010 and 2014 are located at around 35 d after the periastron passage, and the main flare in 2014 is delayed by roughly 1.7 d with respect to that in 2010.In the 2017 flare, the source shows a precursor about 10 d after the periastron passage, but the following two flares become weaker and lag behind those in 2010 by roughly 5 d.The strongest flares in 2017 occurred 58 d and 70 d after the periastron passage.These results challenge the previous models.

Timing analysis of the black hole candidate EXO 1846–031 with Insight-HXMT monitoring

We present the observational results from a detailed timing analysis of the black hole candidate EXO 1846-031 during its outburst in 2019 with the observations of Insight-HXMT,NICER and MAXI.This outburst can be classified roughly into four different states.Type-C quasi-periodic oscillations(QPOs)observed by NICER(about 0.1-6 Hz)and Insight-HXMT(about 0.7-8 Hz)are also reported in this work.Meanwhile,we study various physical quantities related to QPO frequency.The QPO rms-frequency relationship in the energy band 1-10 keV indicates that there is a turning pointing in frequency around2 Hz,which is similar to that of GRS 1915+105.A possible hypothesis for the relationship above may be related to the inclination of the source,which may require a high inclination to explain it.The relationships between QPO frequency and QPO rms,hardness,total fractional rms and count rate have also been found in other transient sources,which can indicate that the origin of type-C QPOs is non-thermal.