Spindown of Pulsars Interacting with Companion Winds: Impact of Magnetospheric Compression

TL;DR

This study investigates how a companion wind can confine a pulsar's magnetosphere, significantly affecting its spindown rate, with implications for understanding pulsar behavior in binary systems like PSR J0737-3039.

Contribution

It introduces a parametrization of magnetospheric confinement effects on pulsar spindown using particle-in-cell simulations, revealing how inclination angles influence the rate.

Findings

Confined pulsar models show increased spindown for aligned axes.

Perpendicular axes lead to reduced spindown due to wavelength mismatch.

Application constrains PSR J0737-3039's magnetic field to approximately 7.3 x 10^{11} G.

Abstract

The presence of a companion wind in neutron star binary systems can form a contact discontinuity well within the pulsar's light cylinder, effectively creating a waveguide that confines the pulsar's electromagnetic fields and significantly alters its spindown. We parametrize this confinement as the ratio between the equatorial position of the contact discontinuity (or standoff distance) $R_\mathrm{m}$ and the pulsar's light cylinder $R_\mathrm{LC}$. We quantify the pulsar spindown for relativistic wind envelopes with $R_\mathrm{m}/R_\mathrm{LC} = 1/3...1$ and varying inclination angles $\chi$ between magnetic and rotation axes using particle-in-cell simulations. Our strongly confined models ($R_\mathrm{m}/R_\mathrm{LC} = 1/3$) identify two distinct limits. For $\chi=0^\circ$, the spindown induced by the compressed pulsar magnetosphere is enhanced by approximately three times compared to an isolated pulsar due to an increased number of open magnetic field lines. Conversely, for $\chi=90^\circ$, the compressed system spins down at less than $40\%$ of the rate of an isolated reference pulsar due to the mismatch between the pulsar wind stripe wavelength and the waveguide size. We directly apply our analysis to the 2.77-second period oblique rotator ($\chi=60^\circ$) in the double pulsar system PSR J0737-3039. With the numerically derived spindown estimate, we constrain its surface magnetic field to $B_* \approx (7.3 \pm 0.2) \times 10^{11}$ G. We discuss the time modulation of its period derivative, the effects of compression on its braking index, and implications for the radio eclipse in PSR J0737-3039.