AstroSat observations of GRO J2058+42 during the 2019 outburst

TL;DR

This paper reports AstroSat observations of the X-ray pulsar GRO J2058+42 during its 2019 outburst, revealing pulsation, flaring, quasi-periodic oscillations, and cyclotron features, advancing understanding of its accretion and magnetic properties.

Contribution

First detailed AstroSat analysis of GRO J2058+42 during outburst, identifying energy-dependent pulse profiles, QPOs, and cyclotron lines, providing new insights into its magnetic field and accretion dynamics.

Findings

Detected pulsation period of 194.2201 s with spin-up rate.

Observed energy-dependent pulse profiles and flaring activity.

Identified cyclotron absorption features at multiple energies.

Abstract

We present results from AstroSat observation of the recent outburst of GRO J2058+42, an X-ray pulsar in a Be-binary system. The source was observed on April 10, 2019 by LAXPC and SXT instruments on AstroSat during its declining phase of the latest giant outburst. Light curves showed a strong pulsation of the pulsar with a period of 194.2201 \pm 0.0016 s, and a spin-up rate of (1.65\pm0.06)\times10^{-11} Hz s^{-1}. Intermittent flaring was detected in light curves between 3--80 keV energy band with increase in intensity by up to 1.8 times its average intensity. Pulse profiles obtained between 3--80 keV energy band of the pulsar showed strong dependence on energy. A broad peak was observed in the power density spectrum of the source consistently during AstroSat observations with its peak oscillation frequency of 0.090 Hz along with its higher harmonics, which may be due to quasi-periodic oscillations, a commonly observed phenomenon in transient X-ray pulsars, during their outburst. AstroSat observation also detected cyclotron absorption features in its spectrum corresponding to (9.7--14.4) keV, (19.3--23.8) keV and (37.8--43.1) keV. The pulse phase resolved spectroscopy of the source showed phase dependent variation in its energy and relative strength of these features. The spectrum was well fitted with an absorbed black-body, a Fermi Dirac cut-off model and alternatively with an absorbed CompTT model. Both these models were combined with a Fe-line and three Gaussian absorption lines to account for observed cyclotron resonance scattering features in the spectrum.