359 research outputs found
Orbital Decay of the PSR J0045-7319/B Star Binary System: Age of Radio Pulsar and Initial Spin of Neutron Star
Recent timing observations of PSR J0045-7319 reveal that the neutron star/B
star binary orbit is decaying on a time scale of |\Porb/\dot\Porb|=0.5 Myr,
shorter than the characteristic age ( Myr) of the pulsar (Kaspi et
al.~1996a). We study mechanisms for the orbital decay. The standard weak
friction theory based on static tide requires far too short a viscous time to
explain the observed \dot\Porb. We show that dynamical tidal excitation of
g-modes in the B star can be responsible for the orbital decay. However, to
explain the observed short decay timescale, the B star must have some
significant retrograde rotation with respect to the orbit --- The retrograde
rotation brings lower-order g-modes, which couple much more strongly to the
tidal potential, into closer ``resonances'' with the orbital motion, thus
significantly enhancing the dynamical tide. A much less likely possibility is
that the g-mode damping time is much shorter than the ordinary radiative
damping time. The observed orbital decay timescale combined with a generic
orbital evolution model based on dynamical tide can be used as a ``timer'',
giving an upper limit of Myr for the age of the binary system since the
neutron star formation. Thus the characteristic age of the pulsar is not a good
age indicator. Assuming standard magnetic dipole braking for the pulsar and no
significant magnetic field decay on a timescale \lo 1 Myr, the upper limit
for the age implies that the initial spin of the neutron star at birth was
close to its current value.Comment: AASTeX, 9 pages, 3 ps figures. ApJ Letters, in pres
Asteroseismology and calibration of alpha Cen binary system
Using the oscillation frequencies of alpha Cen A recently discovered by
Bouchy & Carrier, the available astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic
data, we tried to improve the calibration of the visual binary system alpha
Cen. With the revisited masses of Pourbaix et al. (2002) we do not succeed to
obtain a solution satisfying all the seismic observational constraints.
Relaxing the constraints on the masses, we have found an age t_alpha
Cen=4850+-500 Myr, an initial helium mass fraction Y_i = 0.300+-0.008, and an
initial metallicity (Z/X)_i=0.0459+-0.0019, with M_A=1.100+-0.006M_o and
M_B=0.907+-0.006M_o for alpha Cen A&B.Comment: accepted for publication as a letter in A&
- …