Title: IGR J17062-6143 is an Accreting Millisecond X-ray Pulsar Author: Tod E. Strohmayer, Laurens Keek
We present the discovery of 163.65 Hz X-ray pulsations from IGR J17062-6143 in the only observation obtained from the source with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. This detection makes IGR J17062-6143 the lowest-frequency accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar presently known. The pulsations are detected in the 2 - 12 keV band with an overall significance of 4.3 sigma, and an observed pulsed amplitude of 5.54 ± 0.67 % (in this band). Both dynamic power spectral and coherent phase timing analysis indicate that the pulsation frequency is decreasing during the 1.2 ks observation in a manner consistent with orbital motion of the neutron star. Because the observation interval is short, we cannot precisely measure the orbital period; however, periods shorter than 17 minutes are excluded at 90 % confidence. For the range of acceptable circular orbits the inferred binary mass function substantially overlaps the observed range for the AMXP population as a whole.
Title: X-ray emission and absorption features during an energetic thermonuclear X-ray burst from IGR J17062-6143 Authors: N. Degenaar, J. M. Miller, R. Wijnands, D. Altamirano, A. C. Fabian
Type-I X-ray bursts are thermonuclear explosions occurring in the surface layers of accreting neutron stars. These events are powerful probes of the physics of neutron stars and their surrounding accretion flow. We analyse a very energetic type-I X-ray burst from the neutron star low-mass X-ray binary IGR J17062-6143 that was detected with Swift on 2012 June 25. The light curve of the ~18 min long X-ray burst tail shows an episode of ~10 min during which the intensity is strongly fluctuating by a factor of ~3 above and below the underlying decay trend, on a time scale of seconds. The X-ray spectrum reveals a highly significant emission line around ~1 keV, which can be interpreted as a Fe-L shell line caused by irradiation of cold gas. We also detect significant absorption lines and edges in the Fe-K band, which are strongly suggestive of the presence of hot, highly ionised gas along the line of sight. None of these features are present in the persistent X-ray spectrum of the source. The time scale of the strong intensity variations, the velocity width of the Fe-L emission line (assuming Keplerian motion), and photoionisation modelling of the Fe-K absorption features each independently point to gas at a radius of ~1E3 km as the source of these features. The unusual X-ray light curve and spectral properties could have plausibly been caused by a disruption of the accretion disk due to the super-Eddington fluxes reached during the X-ray burst.