Speaker
Description
It is well established that the frequent stellar dynamical interactions in the high-density globular cluster (GC) cores make them efficient factories of exotic objects, including millisecond pulsars (MSPs). In fact, the number of MSPs per unit mass in the Galactic GC population is some $10^3$ times larger than in the Galactic field.
As part of a large project that aims at exploiting the synergy between the last generation of high-resolution instruments for the identification and characterization of MSP in GCs, I will present recent results obtained for the old GC NGC362.
One of the key innovative points of this analysis is the adoption of a multi-instrument and multi-wavelength approach that makes use of multi-epoch optical and UV Hubble Space Telescope ACS and WFC3 data, NIR Gemini Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics system images and information provided by X-ray observations.
With such a huge and complex database, we were able to identify more than 50 optical counterparts to X-ray sources, revealing a rich and diverse population of interactive binaries in this cluster.
Interestingly, more than 10% of these sources show positions in the color-magnitude diagram and peculiar light curves compatible with the typical signatures of MSP companions known in the literature. In particular, one counterpart exhibits a typical variability and period expected for a Black Widow system.
These potential counterparts will be used to feed an ongoing radio MeerKAT data analysis to help constrain the parameters, such as the position, of interesting radio sources.
The results of this work demonstrate the importance of the adoption of a multi-instrument and multi-band approach for a comprehensive characterization of MSPs. In turn, this kind of analysis will pave the way for future scientific applications allowing the selection of the most promising targets for the next generation telescopes, such as ELT and SKA.
| Affliation | Università di Bologna - INAF OAS |
|---|---|
| Current Position | PhD Student |
