Speaker
Description
Persistent gamma-ray emission dominates the radiative output of gamma-ray binaries, which are thought to be the evolutionary precursors to X-ray binaries. Often, this is attributed to particle acceleration in the shock from the winds of an optical companion and rapidly spinning pulsar or inverse Compton scattering of UV photons in the relativistic jet of an accreting compact object. We present XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations of the newly discovered gamma-ray binary LMC P3 during inferior conjunction, X-ray maximum and X-ray minimum of its 10.3 day orbit. Currently the only gamma-ray binary found outside the Milky Way, LMC P3 is significantly more luminous than similar binary systems at all energy bandpasses. This extreme behavior could possibly be driven by a large spin-down power from the suspected pulsar, as well as a higher UV photon seed density of the O5 III star, but the details of the high energy emission region remain perplexing. We probe the geometry and physical conditions of the high-energy emission region and investigate the nature of the compact object.
