Discovery of Polarized X-Ray Emission from the Accreting Millisecond Pulsar SRGA J144459.2-604207

Papitto Alessandro;Di Marco Alessandro;Poutanen Juri;Salmi Tuomo;Illiano Giulia;La Monaca Fabio;Ambrosino Filippo;Bobrikova Anna;Baglio Maria Cristina;Ballocco Caterina;Burderi Luciano;Campana Sergio;Coti Zelati Francesco;Di Salvo Tiziana;La Placa Riccardo;Loktev Vladislav;Long Sinan;Malacaria Christian;Miraval Zanon Arianna;Ng Mason;Pilia Maura;Sanna Andrea

Writing - Review & Editing

;Stella Luigi;Strohmayer Tod;Zane Silvia

2024-01-01

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Abstract

We report the discovery of polarized X-ray emission from an accreting millisecond pulsar. During a 10-day-long coverage of the February 2024 outburst of SRGA J144459.2−604207, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) detected an average polarization degree of the 2–8 keV emission of 2.3%±0.4% at an angle of 59° ±6° (east of north; the uncertainties quoted are at the 1σ confidence level). The polarized signal shows a significant energy dependence with a degree of 4.0%±0.5% between 3 and 6 keV and < 1.5% (90% c.l.) in the 2–3 keV range. We used NICER, XMM–Newton, and NuSTAR observations to obtain an accurate pulse-timing solution and to perform a phase-resolved polarimetric analysis of IXPE data. We did not detect any significant variability in the Stokes parameters Q and U with the spin and orbital phases. We used the relativistic rotating-vector model to show that a moderately fan-beam emission from two point-like spots at low magnetic obliquity (≃10°) is compatible with the observed pulse profile and polarization properties. IXPE also detected 52 type I X-ray bursts whose recurrence time Δtrec increased from 2 to 8 h as a function of the observed count rate C as Δtrec ∝ C−0.8. We stacked the emission observed during all the bursts and obtained an upper limit on the polarization degree of 8.5% (90% c.l.).