Monte Carlo Simulations on Possible Collimation Effects of Outflows to Fan Beam Emission of Ultraluminous Accreting X-Ray Pulsars

Abstract

Abstract Pulsating ultraluminous X-ray sources (PULXs) are accreting pulsars with apparent X-ray luminosity exceeding 1039 erg s−1. We perform Monte Carlo simulations to investigate whether a high collimation effect (or strong beaming effect) is dominant in the presence of accretion outflows, for the fan beam emission of the accretion column of the neutron stars in PULXs. We show that the three nearby PULXs (RX J0209.6−7427, Swift J0243.6+6124, and SMC X-3), namely, the Three Musketeers here, have their main pulsed emission not strongly collimated even if strong outflows exist. This conclusion can be extended to the current sample of extragalactic PULXs, if accretion outflows are commonly produced from them. This means that the observed high luminosity of PULXs is indeed intrinsic, which can be used to infer the existence of very strong surface magnetic fields of ∼1013–14 G, possibly multipole fields. However, if strong outflows are launched from the accretion disks in PULXs as a consequence of disk spherization by radiation pressure, regular dipole magnetic fields of ∼1012 G may be required, comparable to that of the Three Musketeers, which have experienced large luminosity changes from well below their Eddington limit (2 × 1038 erg s−1 for an NS) to super-Eddington and whose maximum luminosity fills the luminosity gap between Galactic pulsars and extragalactic PULXs.