Yoshitomo Maeda

Abstract We present updated hard X-ray polarization measurements of the Crab pulsar and nebula obtained with the balloon-borne polarimeter XL-Calibur in the ∼19–64 keV energy range. During the flight, intermittent failure of the Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver resulted in poorly constrained timing for ∼38% of the Crab dataset. By implementing a new phase recovery method that reconstructs timing during extended GPS-off intervals, phase tag data are recovered for ∼95% of the GPS-off dataset, increasing the precision of the phase-resolved analysis. Phase information for the data is recovered by using the Crab pulsar, with its 33 ms period, as an external timing source. Using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo framework to jointly fit phase offsets and frequency derivatives, sufficient phase accuracy is achieved across multiple periods without GPS for a phase-resolved analysis. This enables inclusion of nearly the full dataset in the polarization study. The polarization degree of the nebular emission is found to be (27.7 ± 4.9)% at a polarization angle of 127 2 ± 5 1, confirming previous XL-Calibur results and remaining aligned with the Crab’s spin axis, consistent with synchrotron emission from the inner nebula. Phase-resolved measurements show that the off-pulse and bridge intervals exhibit a strong polarization, while the pulsar peaks, although weakly constrained, remain in agreement with the softer-energy trends of IXPE. These findings reinforce a scenario in which hard X-ray emission arises primarily in the nebular torus and wind regions. The successful recovery of precise phase tagging from GPS-off data demonstrates the capacity to use the pulsar as an external clock even in the case of sparsely populated data.

Abstract We report the presence of a highly ionized absorber in the transient, eclipsing low-mass X-ray binary AX J1745.6-2901, observed from 2024 February 26–29 with XRISM’s Resolve and Xtend instruments. During a soft/high state without dips, Resolve’s high spectral resolution ($E/\Delta E \sim 1000$, full width at half-maximum) revealed narrow velocity widths ($\sigma \sim 110~{\rm km~s^{-1 } }$) for Fe xxvi and Ni xxviii lines, even with low photon statistics. These widths are consistent with binary orbital motion. The observed modest blueshift velocity (${\sim }160~{\rm km~s^{-1 } }$) indicates that the absorber is located sufficiently far from the neutron star (${>}10^9$ cm), so that gravitational redshift effects are not dominant. On the other hand, broad-band spectral analysis using a photoionized plasma model applied to the Xtend data constrains the absorber to lie within a radius of ${\lesssim }10^{9.5}$ cm, as inferred from the upper limits of the best-fitting ionization parameter ($\log \xi \sim 4.4$) and the large column density (${\sim }1.6\times 10^{24}~{\rm cm^{-2 } }$). At this distance, the observed outward velocity of the absorber is about an order of magnitude smaller than the escape velocity from the neutron star.