Temporal and spectral variations of the X-ray pulsar Cen X-3 observed by NuSTAR

TL;DR

This study provides a detailed time-resolved spectral and pulse profile analysis of the X-ray pulsar Cen X-3 using NuSTAR observations, revealing energy-dependent pulse shapes, spectral features, and orbital variability.

Contribution

It presents the first comprehensive analysis of Cen X-3's pulse profiles and spectra across different energy bands and orbital phases, highlighting the behavior of cyclotron lines and spectral parameters.

Findings

Pulse profile is stable over orbital phase with energy dependence.

Cyclotron line energy varies from 26 keV to 29 keV.

Spectral parameters show orbital variability and clumpy wind signatures.

Abstract

We report a time-resolved analysis of the accreting X-ray pulsar Cen X-3 using observations carried out by NuSTAR, which cover approximately two binary orbits in different intensity states. The pulse profile is relatively stable over the orbital phase and shows energy dependence. It has an obvious double-peaked shape in the energy band below 15 keV -- with the second pulse peak decreasing as energy increases -- and is gradually dominated by a single peak in higher energy bands. We find that the pulse profile in the energy band of 3-5 keV at high-intensity states shows a subtle triple-peaked shape, with the main peak divided into two subpeaks. We also find a positive correlation between the pulse fraction and both energy and flux. Our spectral analysis reveals that the spectra can be well described by the continuum of Fermi-Dirac cutoff and NPEX models, and the cyclotron line is detected with the centroid energies varying from 26 keV to 29 keV, along with the iron emission line around 6.4 keV. We investigated the dependence between the cyclotron resonant scattering feature (CRSF) centroid energy and luminosity and discuss the theoretical critical luminosity. Although the variation of $E_{\rm cyc}- L_X$ is not distinct, there is a possibility that the critical luminosity lies within the range of $\sim (0.5-4)\times 10^{37}$ erg s$^{-1}$ in the band of $4-78$ keV. The photon index shows a strong positive correlation with luminosity. Our orbital-phase analysis reveals that the spectral parameters show orbital variability, and the highly variable photoelectric absorption may indicate the existence of clumpy stellar winds.