Pulsing ULXs: tip of the iceberg?

Abstract

We consider the three currently known pulsing ultraluminous X--ray sources (PULXs). We show that in one of them the observed spinup rate requires super--Eddington accretion rates at the magnetospheric radius, even if magnetar--strength fields are assumed. In the two other systems a normal--strength neutron star field implies super--Eddington accretion at the magnetosphere. Adopting super--Eddington mass transfer as the defining characteristic of ULX systems, we find the parameters required for self--consistent simultaneous fits of the luminosities and spinup rates of the three pulsed systems. These imply near--equality between their magnetospheric radii $R_M$ and the spherization radii $R_{\rm sph}$ where radiation pressure becomes important and drives mass loss from the accretion disc. We interpret this near--equality as a necessary condition for the systems to appear as pulsed, since if it is violated the pulse fraction is small. We show that as a consequence all PULXs must have spinup rates $\dot\nu \gtrsim 10^{-10}\, {\rm s^{-2}}$, an order of magnitude higher than in any other pulsing neutron--star binaries. The fairly tight conditions required for ULXs to show pulsing support our earlier suggestion that many unpulsed ULX systems must actually contain neutron stars rather than black holes.