Coherent timing of the accreting millisecond pulsar NGC 6440 X-2

TL;DR

This study analyzes the pulsations of the accreting millisecond pulsar NGC 6440 X-2 over multiple outbursts, providing precise orbital parameters and exploring phase coherence challenges due to systematic uncertainties.

Contribution

It offers the first accurate orbital ephemeris for NGC 6440 X-2 and investigates the feasibility of phase-coherent timing across outbursts.

Findings

Orbital period constrained to 57 minutes with sub-ms precision.

No detectable orbital period derivative within upper limit.

Multiple phase-connected solutions due to systematic uncertainties.

Abstract

We study the 205.9 Hz pulsations of the accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar NGC 6440 X-2 across all outbursts observed with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer over a period of 800 days. We find the pulsations are highly sinusoidal with a fundamental amplitude of 5%-15% rms and a second harmonic that is only occasionally detected with amplitudes of <2% rms. By connecting the orbital phase across multiple outbursts, we obtain an accurate orbital ephemeris for this source and constrain its 57 min orbital period to sub-ms precision. We do not detect an orbital period derivative to an upper limit of $ | \dot{P} | \leq 8 \times 10^{-11}$ s/s. We investigate the possibility of coherently connecting the pulse phase across all observed outbursts, but find that due to the poorly constrained systematic uncertainties introduced by a flux-dependent bias in the pulse phase, multiple statistically acceptable phase-connected timing solutions exist.