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An international team of astronomers has detected synchronous X-ray and radio mode switching between radio-bright and a radio-quiet modes in the pulsar PSR B0823+26. The discovery marks the second time that such synchronous mode switching has been observed in a pulsar. The finding is detailed in a paper published August 6 on arXiv.org.

To date, synchronous X-ray and radio mode switching has been identified only in one old and nearly aligned pulsar known as PSR B0943+10. Therefore, astronomers are interested in finding such behavior in other objects in order to improve knowledge about the poorly understood mechanisms behind this activity.

The new study, conducted by a group of scientists led by Willem Hermsen of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, presents another example of a pulsar experiencing synchronous X-ray and radio mode switching. The discovery was made as a result of observations with ESA's XMM-Newton spacecraft, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India and international stations of the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR).

"We observed the radio-mode switching PSR B0823+26 for about 39 hours simultaneously in X-rays and the radio band and report the discovery of synchronous correlated X-ray and radio mode switching," the researchers wrote in the paper.

PSR B0823+26, located some 1,000 light years away from the Earth, is one of the brightest radio pulsars in the Northern sky. It has a period about 530 milliseconds, a spin-down age of approximately 4.9 million years and an inferred magnetic field of around 980 billion G.

The observations performed by Hermsen's team allowed the researchers to find that PSR B0823+26 switches between a radio-bright (B) mode and a radio-quiet (Q) mode. In particular, the pulsar was found to be in the radio B mode during five out of six XMM-Newton observations and in the Q mode during only one observation. Moreover, the pulsar spent only approximately 15 percent of the time in Q mode over entire radio observational campaign with GMRT and LOFAR.

Source: href="https://phys.org/news/2018-08-astronomers-synchronous-x-ray-radio-mode.html [phys.org]

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