The study of coherent optical pulsations of the millisecond pulsar PSR J1023+0038 on Russian 6-m telescope

Abstract

© 2019 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim We observed the millisecond redback pulsar PSR J1023+0038 in its accreting regime on two nights in November 2017 on Russian 6-m telescope with a high-temporal resolution panoramic photometer-polarimeter in a two-channel (“blue” and “red”) setup. During 400 s (12% of nearly 3 hr of total observations), we detected coherent optical pulsations in both color bands with 1.69-ms period, corresponding to the rotational period of neutron star known from the radio data, with amplitudes of 2.1% (“red”) and 1.3% (“blue”). Corresponding luminosity of pulsed component is about 1031 erg s−1 and may be caused by a synchrotron emission of electrons with moderate Lorentz factors close to a light cylinder during the interaction of accretion disk with ejected matter modulated with rotational period.