Properties of PSR J1023+0038 Based on Kepler, TESS, and FAST

Abstract

The pulsar system PSR J1023+0038 is a very interesting binary with radio millisecond pulsar and low-mass X-ray binary transitions, which depend on the stellar accretion process. We have used Kepler light curves with 1 minute cadence and TESS light curves with 2 minute cadence to study the flare properties of PSR J1023+0038. We detected 516 flare events in the K2 data and 84 flare events in the TESS survey data. We determined the flare rise and delay times, the flare durations and amplitudes, and flare energies. We obtained a value of the power-law index of 0.359 ± 0.023 between the flare energies and decay times, which is similar to the theoretically predicted value of 1/3. This in turn indicates that PSR J1023+0038 might be exhibiting physical mechanisms described by magnetic reconnection theory. Using the maximum likelihood estimation method, we also calculated the power-law index of the cumulative flare frequency distribution, finding 1.87 ± 0.27 for the Kepler data and 1.74 ± 0.29 for the TESS data. Meanwhile, we reduced six FAST observations of PSR J1023+0038 from 2019–2021 using a standard pulsar search procedure. We report that we detected a prompt signal with a period compatible with that found in previous observations of PSR J1023+0038. However, there are several reasons (statistical, excess DM, pulse shape, etc.) as to why the association is not likely.

Keywords

• Stellar activity
• Stellar flares
• Pulsars