Polarization of accreting X-ray pulsars. I. A new model
- Creators
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Caiazzo, Ilaria
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Heyl, Jeremy
Abstract
A new window is opening in high-energy astronomy: X-ray polarimetry. With many missions currently under development and scheduled to launch as early as 2021, observations of the X-ray polarization of accreting X-ray pulsars will soon be available. As polarization is particularly sensitive to the geometry of the emission region, the upcoming polarimeters will shed new light on the emission mechanism of these objects, provided that we have sound theoretical models that agree with current spectroscopic and timing observation and that can make predictions of the polarization parameters of the emission. We here present a new model for the polarized emission of accreting X-ray pulsars in the accretion column scenario that for the first time takes into account the macroscopic structure and dynamics of the accretion region and the propagation of the radiation towards the observer, including relativistic beaming, gravitational lensing, and quantum electrodynamics. In this paper, we present all the details of the model, while in a companion paper, we apply our model to predict the polarization parameters of the bright X-ray pulsar Hercules X-1.
Additional Information
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model). Accepted 2020 October 29. Received 2020 October 29; in original form 2020 May 27. Published: 05 November 2020. We would like to thank Michael Wolff, Peter Becker, and the XMAG collaboration for valuable input, and Sterl Phinney for useful comments. The research was supported by NSERC Canada, Compute Canada, a Burke Fellowship at Caltech, and a Four-Year Fellowship at UBC. Data Availability: All the figures in this work show calculations derived analytically from the equations presented throughout the paper. We apply our model to the accreting X-ray pulsar Hercules X-1 for different possible geometries in Paper II, and the values for the predicted polarization fraction and angle as function of phase and energy in those geometries are available in the public Github repository https://github.com/UBC-Astrophysics/QEDSurface/tree/master/Caiazzo_Heyl_Model.Attached Files
Published - staa3428.pdf
Submitted - 2009.00631.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 108006
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20210211-131223823
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Compute Canada
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Caltech
- University of British Columbia
- Created
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2021-02-11Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- TAPIR, Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics