Submitted on April 26, 2006
Accepted on June 19, 2006
A Long-Period, Violently Variable X-ray Source in a Young Supernova Remnant
Andrea De Luca 1*,
Patrizia A. Caraveo 1,
Sandro Mereghetti 1,
Andrea Tiengo 1,
Giovanni F. Bignami 2
1 Istituto Nazionale d'Astrofisica-Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica, Via Bassini 15, I-20133 Milano, Italy.
2 Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements, CNRS-UPS, 9 Av. du Colonel Roche, 31028 Toulouse Cedex 4, France. Present address: Dipartimento di Fisica Nucleare e Teorica, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Via Bassi 6, I-27100 Pavia, Italy.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Andrea De Luca , E-mail: deluca{at}iasf-milano.inaf.it
Observations with the Newton X-ray Multimirror Mission (XMM) show a strong periodic modulation at 6.67 ± 0.03 hours of the X-ray source at the center of the 2,000-year-old supernova remnant RCW 103. No fast pulsations are visible. If genetically tied to the supernova remnant, the source could either be an X-ray binary, comprising a compact object and a low-mass star in an eccentric orbit, or an isolated neutron star. In the latter case, its age-period combination would point to a peculiar magnetar, dramatically slowed-down, possibly by a supernova debris disc. Both scenarios require non-standard assumptions on the formation and evolution of compact objects in supernova explosions.
