X-ray and infrared enhancement of anomalous x-ray pulsar 1E 2259+586

Official URL: http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/640/1/435/61957.web.pdf?request-id=968df3a6-77fe-4cc6-84ef-8701f5e58a02

The long-term ( 1.5 yr) X-ray enhancement and the accompanying infrared enhancement light curves of the anomalous X-ray pulsar 1E 2259+586 following the major bursting epoch can be accounted for by the relaxation of a fallback disk that has been pushed back by a gamma-ray flare. The required burst energy estimated from the results of our model fits is low enough for such a burst to have remained below the detection limits. We find that an irradiated disk model with a low irradiation efficiency is in good agreement with both X-ray and infrared data. Nonirradiated disk models also give a good fit to the X-ray light curve, but are not consistent with the infrared data for the first week of the enhancement.