Population synthesis of AX J1745.6-2901 X-ray nova type binaries with rapidly decreasing orbital periods

TL;DR

This study uses population synthesis modeling to explain the rapid orbital period decrease in the neutron star X-ray binary AX J1745.6-2901, highlighting the role of magnetic stellar winds in angular momentum loss.

Contribution

The paper introduces a population synthesis approach demonstrating magnetic stellar winds can account for rapid orbital decay in neutron star X-ray binaries, a phenomenon unexplained by standard models.

Findings

Magnetic stellar winds can explain observed orbital period derivatives.

Estimated magnetic field strengths align with observed binary systems.

Reproduced the abundance of anomalous neutron star X-ray novae.

Abstract

The neutron star low mass X-ray binary (LMXB) AX J1745.6-2901 was detected an anomalously fast decrease of orbital period. The decreasing rate of orbital period exceeds the contribution of all processes extracting angular momentum from the binary star in standard model. Using SCENARIO MACHINE code we conducted a population synthesis study of X-ray novae with neutron stars to investigate a possible formation and evolution of such binaries. Such close LMXBs should experience a preceding common envelope stage, in which the magnetic fields of the low mass main-sequence donor stars can be dramatically amplified. Our calculations show that the magnetic stellar wind of the optical companion can efficiently extract angular momentum from the binary systems, and produce the observed orbital-period derivatives of AX J1745.6-2901 and black hole LMXBs. The estimated values of the required magnetic field induction are following: $B_\textrm{d}\approx 400$ G (AX~J1745.6-2901), $B_\textrm{d}\approx 1500$ G (KV UMa), $B_\textrm{d}\approx 400$ G (A0620-00), $B_\textrm{d}\approx 1800$ G (Nova Muscae). We successfully reproduced the current observational abundance of such anomalous neutron star X-ray novae, and computed the appropriate value of the parameter of magnetic braking $\lambda_\textrm{MSW}$ ($0.8-0.6$ for Roche lobe filling stars and $0.4-0.15$ for binaries with partial Roche lobe filling).