Bibcode
Blay, P.; Ribó, M.; Negueruela, I.; Torrejón, J. M.; Reig, P.; Camero, A.; Mirabel, I. F.; Reglero, V.
Referencia bibliográfica
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 438, Issue 3, August II 2005, pp.963-972
Fecha de publicación:
8
2005
Revista
Número de citas
29
Número de citas referidas
26
Descripción
The majority of High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs) behave like X-ray
pulsars, revealing that they contain a magnetised neutron star. Among
the four HMXBs showing neither pulsations nor the characteristics of
accreting black holes, there is the unusual HMXB 4U
2206+54. Here we present contemporaneous high-energy and radio
observations of this system conducted with INTEGRAL and the VLA, in
order to unveil its nature. The high-energy spectra show clear
indications of the presence of an absorption feature at ~32 keV. This is
the third high-energy observatory to reveal marginal evidence of this
feature, giving strong support to the existence of a cyclotron resonance
scattering feature, which implies a magnetic field of 3.6×
1012 G. On the other hand, the source is not detected at
centimetre radio wavelengths with a 3σ upper limit of 0.039 mJy.
The expected radio emission for an accreting black hole in the low/hard
state, inferred from X-ray flux measurements, would be at least 60 times
greater than the measured upper limit. Both results firmly indicate
that, in spite of the absence of pulsations, 4U
2206+54 hosts a magnetic accreting neutron star, the first one
not to be observed as an X-ray pulsar.