A Gaia view of the optical and X-ray luminosities of compact binary millisecond pulsars

Karri I. I. Koljonen; Manuel Linares

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A Gaia view of the optical and X-ray luminosities of compact binary millisecond pulsars

Karri I. I. Koljonen, Manuel Linares

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Submitted 14 Aug 2023

abstract compiled · 2026-09-23 · no language-model review

The authors' main claim Finally, we find that the bolometric optical luminosity significantly correlates with the orbital period, with a large scatter due to different irradiated stellar temperatures and binary properties.

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arXiv ID2308.07377 (version 1)

Pith IDIYYQRO6M, Pith's permanent record of this paper and its review

CitationKarri I. I. Koljonen, Manuel Linares. "A Gaia view of the optical and X-ray luminosities of compact binary millisecond pulsars." arXiv:2308.07377 (2023). https://pith.science/paper/IYYQRO6M

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What the abstract itself states, as probabilities: claims first 0.04 · states limitation 0.53 · human participants 0.01 · controlled comparison 0.21 · randomized assignment 0.01 · states quantitative result 0.99 · compares with prior results 0.95 · mentions code or data availability 0.02.

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arXiv listing abstract v1. Results and the main claim are underlined; show every role.

In this paper, we study compact binary millisecond pulsars with low- and very low-mass companion stars (spiders) in the Galactic field, using data from the latest Gaia data release (DR3). We infer the parallax distances of the optical counterparts to spiders, which we use to estimate optical and X-ray luminosities. We compare the parallax distances to those derived from radio pulse dispersion measures and find that they have systematically larger values, by 40% on average. We also test the correlation between X-ray and spin-down luminosities, finding that most redbacks have a spin-down to X-ray luminosity conversion efficiency of $\sim$0.1%, indicating a contribution from the intrabinary shock. On the other hand, most black widows have an efficiency of $\sim$0.01%, similar to the majority of the pulsar population. Finally, we find that the bolometric optical luminosity significantly correlates with the orbital period, with a large scatter due to different irradiated stellar temperatures and binary properties. We interpret this correlation as the effect of the increasing size of the Roche Lobe radius with the orbital period. With this newly found correlation, an estimate of the optical magnitude can be obtained from the orbital period and a distance estimate.

background contribution method result interpretation main claim

What the classifier reports for each sentence. The number is the probability it gave the label.
#	sentence	role	the authors' own work	states the main conclusion	strength
s0	In this paper, we study compact binary millisecond pulsars with low- and very low-mass companion stars (spiders) in the Galactic field, using data from the latest Gaia data release (DR3).	contribution 0.91	0.91	0.03	asserted 0.79
s1	We infer the parallax distances of the optical counterparts to spiders, which we use to estimate optical and X-ray luminosities.	method 0.92	0.97	0.05	asserted 0.99
s2	We compare the parallax distances to those derived from radio pulse dispersion measures and find that they have systematically larger values, by 40% on average.	result 1.00	0.94	0.12	asserted 1.00
s3	We also test the correlation between X-ray and spin-down luminosities, finding that most redbacks have a spin-down to X-ray luminosity conversion efficiency of $\sim$0.1%, indicating a contribution from the intrabinary shock.	result 0.99	0.97	0.15	asserted 0.78
s4	On the other hand, most black widows have an efficiency of $\sim$0.01%, similar to the majority of the pulsar population.	result 1.00	0.94	0.07	asserted 1.00
s5	Finally, we find that the bolometric optical luminosity significantly correlates with the orbital period, with a large scatter due to different irradiated stellar temperatures and binary properties.	result 1.00	0.97	0.34	asserted 1.00
s6	We interpret this correlation as the effect of the increasing size of the Roche Lobe radius with the orbital period.	interpretation 1.00	0.56	0.20	asserted 0.94
s7	With this newly found correlation, an estimate of the optical magnitude can be obtained from the orbital period and a distance estimate.	interpretation 0.40	0.72	0.16	asserted 0.76

What kind of paper the classifier reports this is: empirical study 1.00 · evidence from analysis of existing data 1.00.

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Every quoted sentence on this record is the authors'. Every label is from Pith's closed vocabulary, with the probability shown beside it. Every number in the measurements table is the authors', checked by code. Record as JSON

The paper

Original abstract

In this paper, we study compact binary millisecond pulsars with low- and very low-mass companion stars (spiders) in the Galactic field, using data from the latest Gaia data release (DR3). We infer the parallax distances of the optical counterparts to spiders, which we use to estimate optical and X-ray luminosities. We compare the parallax distances to those derived from radio pulse dispersion measures and find that they have systematically larger values, by 40% on average. We also test the correlation between X-ray and spin-down luminosities, finding that most redbacks have a spin-down to X-ray luminosity conversion efficiency of $\sim$0.1%, indicating a contribution from the intrabinary shock. On the other hand, most black widows have an efficiency of $\sim$0.01%, similar to the majority of the pulsar population. Finally, we find that the bolometric optical luminosity significantly correlates with the orbital period, with a large scatter due to different irradiated stellar temperatures and binary properties. We interpret this correlation as the effect of the increasing size of the Roche Lobe radius with the orbital period. With this newly found correlation, an estimate of the optical magnitude can be obtained from the orbital period and a distance estimate.

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References

Forward citations

Cited by 2 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

Detection of X-ray Emission from a Bright Long-Period Radio Transient
astro-ph.HE 2024-11 conditional novelty 8.0 of 10

A bright long-period radio transient shows periodic X-ray emission at the same 44.2-minute period, making it the first LPT detected in X-rays and establishing a new class of hour-scale periodic X-ray transients.
Three New Likely Spider Millisecond Pulsar Binaries and Optical Kinematic Tracers of Intrabinary Shocks
astro-ph.HE 2026-09 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

Two new likely redback millisecond pulsar binaries are found, and hydrogen-alpha emission in one is kinematically tied to an intrabinary shock near the pulsar.

How the literature uses it

4 arXiv papers cite this in 5 sentences

Each citing sentence is taken from the citing paper's LaTeX source and typed by Pith's classifier. A label appears at probability 0.8 or more (0.95 for support), a contest at 0.7 or more; the quoted words are the citing authors'. How each label was checked · JSON

Papers citing it · 4 sentences without a confident label

Compares with it 1 paper

The companion of the RB PSR J1816+4510 has an unusually high temperature of 16000 K [ref] but its variability over the orbit is low [ref] .

Nature of 4FGL J1838.2+3223: a flaring `spider' pulsar candidate · Discussion · 0.83

What it cites · 4 sentences without a confident label

Uses the method or tool of 1 paper

Then we converted the dereddened magnitudes to absolute magnitude distributions and subsequently to luminosity distributions by sampling either the Gaia DR3 parallax or DM posterior distances, using temperature-dependent bolometric corrections from [ref] which are derived using the MARCS synthetic stellar spectra [ref] .

Gaia Data Release 3: Astrophysical parameters inference system (Apsis) I -- methods and content overview · Orbital period – optical luminosity correlation in spiders · 0.88

Uses data or values from 3 papers

We searched for the optical counterparts to the currently known spider population in the Gaia data release three (DR3; [ref] ).

Gaia Data Release 3: Summary of the content and survey properties · Observations · 0.94
The list of confirmed black widows (37) and candidates (4) was taken from [ref] .

A New Flaring Black Widow Candidate and Demographics of Black Widow Millisecond Pulsars in the Galactic Field · Observations · 1.00
In both sources, the absorbing column density is unconstrained, thus we fix it to the value of 1.3$×$10$^21$ cm$^-2$ reported by [ref] , and 0.3$×$10$^21$ cm$^-2$ expected along the line of sight [ref] , respectively, for PSR J1628$-$3205 and PSR J1816+4510, and using the abundances from [ref] .

X-Ray Studies of Redbacks · Chandra · 1.00

Compares with 1 paper

This is evident when comparing to the full sample of black widow X-ray luminosities [ref] that agree well with the sample from globular clusters.

A New Flaring Black Widow Candidate and Demographics of Black Widow Millisecond Pulsars in the Galactic Field · Conclusions · 0.97

Cites as background 2 papers

The relation between the spin-down power ($Ė$) and the X-ray luminosity in pulsars has been the focus of several studies [ref] .

A comparison of millisecond pulsar populations between globular clusters and the Galactic field · Efficiency of X-ray emission from spiders · 1.00
The relation between the spin-down power ($Ė$) and the X-ray luminosity in pulsars has been the focus of several studies [ref] .

Pulsar Wind Nebulae in the Chandra Era · Efficiency of X-ray emission from spiders · 1.00

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