Accretion Onto Fast X-Ray Pulsars

Abstract

The recent emergence of a new class of accretion-powered, transient, millisecond X-ray pulsars presents some difficulties for the conventional picture of accretion onto rapidly rotating magnetized neutron stars and their spin behavior during outbursts. In particular, it is unclear from the standard paradigm how these systems manage to accrete over such a wide range in dM/dt (i.e., >~ a factor of 50), and why the neutron stars exhibit a high rate of spindown in at least a number of cases. Following up on prior suggestions, we propose that `fast' X-ray pulsars can continue to accrete, and that their accretion disks terminate at approximately the corotation radius. We demonstrate the existence of such disk solutions by modifying the Shakura-Sunyaev equations with a simple magnetic torque prescription. The solutions are completely analytic, and have the same dependence on dM/dt and alpha (the viscosity parameter) as the original Shakura-Sunyaev solutions; but, the radial profiles can be considerably modified, depending on the degree of fastness. We apply these results to compute the torques expected during the outbursts of the transient millisecond pulsars, and find that we can explain the large spindown rates that are observed for quite plausible surface magnetic fields of ~10^9 G.