Implications of the PSR 1257+12 Planetary System for Isolated Millisecond Pulsars

Miller, M. Coleman; Hamilton, D. P.

doi:10.1086/319813

Cited by 48 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 37 publications

(47 reference statements)

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“…22,23 However, millisecond pulsars are generally believed to have been spun up through sustained disk accretion, and the formation and survival of a debris disk and planetary system in this context are difficult to explain. 27 Our discovery does not directly address this system, but it does demonstrate that a debris disk around a neutron star is indeed possible. Despite this, it is not clear whether the radiation-rich environment around 4U 0142+61 is suitable for the formation and survival of planets.…”

mentioning

confidence: 82%

A debris disk around an isolated young neutron star

Wang

Chakrabarty

Kaplan

2006

Nature

317

358

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Pulsars are rotating, magnetized neutron stars that are born in supernova explosions following the collapse of the cores of massive stars. If some of the explosion ejecta fail to escape, it may fall back onto the neutron star 1 or it may possess sufficient angular momentum to form a disk. 2 Such 'fallback' is both a general prediction of current supernova models 3 and, if the material pushes the neutron star over its stability limit, a possible mode of black hole formation. 4 Fallback disks could dramatically affect the early evolution of pulsars, 2,5 yet there are few observational constraints on whether significant fallback occurs or even the existence of such disks. Here we report the discovery of mid-infrared emission from a cool disk around an isolated young X-ray pulsar. The disk does not power the pulsar's X-ray emission but is passively illuminated by these X-rays. The estimated mass of the disk is of the order of 10 Earth masses, and its lifetime ( > ∼ 10 6 yr) significantly exceeds the spin-down age of the pulsar, supporting a supernova fallback origin. The disk resembles protoplanetary disks seen around ordinary young stars, 6 suggesting the possibility of planet formation around young neutron stars.The so-called anomalous X-ray pulsars 7 (AXPs) are a group of young ( < ∼ 10 5 yr) neutron stars with spin periods falling in a narrow range (5-12 s), no evidence for binary companions, and whose X-ray luminosities (∼ 10 36 erg s −1 ) greatly exceed their rates of rotational kinetic energy loss (∼ 10 33 erg s −1 ). AXPs are generally believed to be 'magnetars', 8 which are isolated neutron stars with exceptionally strong ( > ∼ 10 14 G) surface magnetic field strengths and whose magnetic energy ultimately powers their X-ray emission. An alternative explanation for AXPs attributes their X-ray emission to accretion from a residual debris disk, 9-11 but this model has had difficulties explaining observations. 12 The brightest known AXP is the 8.7 s pulsar 4U 0142+61, at a distance of 3.9 kpc (ref. 13). Besides its X-ray emission, the pulsar also has known optical 14 and near-infrared 12 (near-IR) counterparts.As part of a systematic search for fallback disks around young neutron stars, we observed the field around 4U 0142+61 in the 4.5 µm and 8.0 µm bands with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope to look for the infrared excess predicted by models for an X-ray heated fallback disk. 15 We found a candidate mid-IR counterpart at the pulsar's position in both bands (Fig. 1) that has very unusual IR colours (Fig. 2). Based on the position coincidence and colours, we conclude that we have identified the mid-IR counterpart of 4U 0142+61.We can reconstruct the observed low-energy spectral energy distribution of 4U 0142+61 by combining our Spitzer data with existing IR and optical data 12,16 (Fig. 3). We may then infer the intrinsic spectrum by correcting for interstellar reddening. Although this reddening correction has little effect on the mid-IR data, it significantly affects the optical...

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confidence: 82%

A debris disk around an isolated young neutron star

Wang

Chakrabarty

Kaplan

2006

Nature

317

358

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“…Alternatively, Cordes & Shannon (2006) have proposed that fallback disks containing տ g of material could 24 10 form asteroids and inject them into the magnetospheres of pulsars with a high enough rate to explain the observed intermittency in their radio pulses. Asteroids might not survive the outbursts of LMXBs (Miller & Hamilton 2001), but the midinfrared excesses that we have identified could be the remnants of similar fallback disks.…”

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confidence: 82%

Mid-Infrared Emission from Dust around Quiescent Low-Mass X-Ray Binaries

Muno

Mauerhan

2006

ApJ

113

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We report the discovery of excess 4.5 and 8 mm emission from three quiescent black hole low-mass X-ray binaries, A0620Ϫ00, GS 2023ϩ338, and XTE J1118ϩ480, and the lack of similar excess emission from Cen X-4. The mid-infrared emission from GS 2023ϩ338 probably originates in the accretion disk. However, the excess emission from A0620Ϫ00 and XTE J1118ϩ480 is brighter and peaks at longer wavelengths, and thus most likely originates from circumbinary dust that is heated by the light of the secondary star. For these two sources, we find that the inner edges of the dust distributions lie near 1.7 times the binary separations, which are the minimum radii at which circumbinary disks would be stable against tidal disruption. The excesses are weak at 24 mm, which implies that the dust does not extend beyond about 3 times the binary separations. The total masses of circumbinary material are between and g. The material could be the remains of fallback 22 24 10 10 disks produced in supernovae, or material from the companions injected into circumbinary orbits during mass transfer.

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“…1, the data do not exclude a possibility that dusty disks ranging from a fraction of the mass of the solar system asteroid belt up to possibly ∼100 M ⊕ may exist around pulsars over a wide range of temperatures and grain sizes. Conditions for the existence of such disks have been recently examined by Miller & Hamilton (2001), who specifically predict that a leftover material cannot exist around pulsars without planets. This is because such pulsars have evidently not managed to develop protoplanetary disks with a sufficient mass (m d ≥ 10 28 g for PSR B1257+12) to protect themselves against evaporation by the pulsar wind and accretion flux that would prevent planet formation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Of course, properties and composition of such disks may be significantly different from those of the disks commonly observed around young normal stars (e.g., Boss 2003). In addition, the initial conditions for planet formation in an expanding disk must depend on its ability to protect itself from high-energy photons generated by early accretion onto the pulsar and from a wind of ultrarelativistic particles that carries most of the pulsar's spindown energy (Phinney & Hansen 1993;Miller & Hamilton 2001). Although the spindown luminosities of pulsars are, in principle, more than sufficient to heat the dust grains, the efficiency of this process depends on a degree of coupling of the pulsar wind to dust, which is difficult to predict in absence of a sufficient observational evidence.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A search for cold dust around neutron stars

Löhmer¹,

Wolszczan

Wielebinski³

2004

A&A

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Abstract. We present observations of nine radio pulsars using the Heinrich-Hertz-Telescope at λ 0.87 mm and the IRAM 30-m telescope at λ 1.2 mm in search for a cold dust around these sources. Five of the program pulsars have been observed for the first time at the mm-wavelengths. The results are consistent with the absence of circumpulsar disks that would be massive enough (≥0.01 M ) to support planet formation according to the scenarios envisioned for solar-type stars, but they do not exclude lower mass (≤10−100 M ⊕ ) disks for a wide range of grain sizes. These conclusions confirm the previously published results and, together with the current lack of further detections of pulsar planets, they suggest that planet formation around neutron stars is not a common phenomenon.

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Implications of the PSR 1257+12 Planetary System for Isolated Millisecond Pulsars

Cited by 48 publications

References 37 publications

A debris disk around an isolated young neutron star

A debris disk around an isolated young neutron star

Mid-Infrared Emission from Dust around Quiescent Low-Mass X-Ray Binaries

A search for cold dust around neutron stars

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