Abstract
Spider pulsars are millisecond pulsars in short-period (≲12-h) orbits with low-mass (~0.01–0.4 M⊙) companion stars. The pulsars ablate plasma from the companion star, causing time delays and eclipses of the radio emission from the pulsar. The magnetic field of the companion has been proposed to strongly influence both the evolution of the binary system1 and the eclipse properties of the pulsar emission2. Changes in the rotation measure (RM) have been seen in a spider system, implying that there is an increase in the magnetic field near the eclipse3. Here we report a diverse range of evidence for a highly magnetized environment in the spider system PSR B1744 – 24A4, located in the globular cluster Terzan 5. We observe semi-regular profile changes to the circular polarization, V, when the pulsar emission passes close to the companion. This suggests that there is Faraday conversion where the radio wave tracks a reversal in the parallel magnetic field and constrains the companion magnetic field, B (> 10 G). We also see irregular, fast changes in the RM at random orbital phases, implying that the magnetic strength of the stellar wind, B, is greater than 10 mG. There are similarities between the unusual polarization behaviour of PSR B1744 – 24A and some repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs)5,6,7. Together with the possible binary-produced long-term periodicity of two active repeating FRBs8,9, and the discovery of a nearby FRB in a globular cluster10, where pulsar binaries are common, these similarities suggest that a proportion of FRBs have binary companions.
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Data availability
Data are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6983925.
Code availability
DSPSR is available at http://dspsr.sourceforge.net and PSRCHIVE is available at http://psrchive.sourceforge.net.
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Acknowledgements
D.Z.L. acknowledges discussions with T. Piro, V. Ravi, H. Vedantham, U.-L. Pen, S. Phinney, J. Fuller and C. Thompson. A.B. is supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement No. 617199 (‘ALERT’) and by the Vici research programme ‘ARGO’ with project number 639.043.815, financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Y.-P.Y. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China grant No.12003028, the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022SKA0130101), and the China Manned Spaced Project (CMS-CSST-2021-B11). S.R. is a CIFAR fellow and is supported by the NSF Physics Frontiers Center awards 1430284 and 2020265. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities. The Green Bank Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities.
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D.Z.L. modelled and interpreted the data, and prepared the majority of the manuscript. A.B. performed data pre-processing, calibration and intermediate measurements. S.R. led the data acquisition and discovered the variability of circularly polarized emission. R.M. and Y.-P.Y. helped to revise the draft and provided valuable comments.
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Extended data figures and tables
Extended Data Fig. 1 The large-scale B∥ reversal with various orientations of the companion magnetic axis.
We specify the direction of the north magnetic pole P with the longitude and latitude (α, δ), with which the point at the equator facing the pulsar is defined to be (0, 0). Panels a,b and c correspond to P pointing towards (180°, 50°), (0°, 50°) and (90°, 20°), respectively. In all cases, B∥ experiences a large-scale reversal when the ∣B∣ is around the maximum. With the same companion magnetic-field configuration as in Fig. 3, we calculate ξ following equation (10), and show that they are greater than 1 at orbit phase 0.25 in all three cases, which means that Faraday conversion will happen.
Extended Data Fig. 2 The individual influence of the two polarized propagation effects on the pulse profile.
We use the best-fit parameter (equation (15)) near the superior conjunction, where the degree of conversion (C ) = −1, A = 1.1, α = −3.5, Av = −0.21, αv = −3.7, the optical depth for I (τ ) = A(f/f0)–α, the optical depth for V (τv) = \({A}_{v}{(\int /{\int }_{0})}^{-{a}_{v}}\), and f0 = 2 GHz. (a) The unperturbed profile of I (black) and V (blue), which are also shown in Fig. 2d. (b,c) The model I (purple) and V (green) when the unperturbed profiles in (a) have gone through only circularly polarized absorption or Faraday conversion. (d) The joint effects of the absorption and conversion on the pulse profile. The resulting profiles are also shown in the purple and green curves in Fig. 2e, which matches the observed profiles.
Extended Data Fig. 3 Circular polarization varies with orbital phase and frequency.
(a) The predicted change in circular polarization, V, at higher frequency with the model in Fig. 3. The waterfall shows the V behaviour for a single spin phase, with red and blue representing different signs. Around the superior conjunction, ϕ = 0.25, V will experience Faraday conversion resulting in the change of sign. The window for Faraday conversion will become narrower at higher frequency. (b) The fitted optical depth near the superior conjunction following equation (15). Both the total optical depth, τ, and the circular polarization related τV are decreasing fast with frequency. The modelling of circularly polarized absorption against orbital phase has more uncertainty than with Faraday conversion, owing to the unknown distribution of mildly relativistic electrons as a function of orbital phase. However, it is safe to ignore τV and study the conversion against orbital phase at higher frequency, because τV is already small at 2.4 GHz.
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Li, D., Bilous, A., Ransom, S. et al. A highly magnetized environment in a pulsar binary system. Nature 618, 484–488 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05983-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05983-z
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