Speaker
David Abarca
(Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center)
Description
We model an ultraluminous X-ray source using a global 2D axisymmetric general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamic simulation of super-Eddington accretion onto a neutron star with a 10 billion Gauss dipolar magnetic field. We found that the magnetic confinement of the gas into accretion columns along with the interaction of the gas with the neutron star surface produce a total luminosity of a few times the Eddington limit. Furthermore, this radiation is beamed by outflows from the accretion disk causing the apparent isotropic luminosity to exceed $10^{40}$ erg/s, showing that low-magnetic field neutron stars can be good candidates for the central engines of ULXs.
Primary author
David Abarca
(Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center)
Co-authors
Dr
Kyle Parfrey
(School of Mathematics, Trinity College Dublin)
Wlodek Kluzniak