The 2015 outburst of the accretion-powered pulsar IGR J00291+5934: INTEGRAL and Swift observations

The pulsar IGR J00291+5934 is the fastest-known accretion-powered X-ray pulsar, discovered during a transient outburst in 2004. In this paper, we report on INTEGRAL and Swift observations during the 2015 outburst, which lasts for 25 d. The source has not been observed in outburst since 2008, suggesting that the long-term accretion rate has decreased by a factor of two since discovery. The averaged broad-band (0.1-250 keV) persistent spectrum in 2015 is well described by a thermal Comptonization model with a column density of N_H ≈ 4 × 10²¹ cm^-2, a plasma temperature of kT_e ≈ 50 keV, and a Thomson optical depth of τ_T ≈ 1. Pulsations at the known spin period of the source are detected in the INTEGRAL data up to the 150 keV energy band. We also report on the discovery of the first thermonuclear burst observed from IGR J00291+5934, which lasts around 7 min and occurs at a persistent emission level corresponding to roughly 1.6% of the Eddington accretion rate. The properties of the burst suggest it is powered primarily by helium ignited at a depth of y_ign ≈ 1.5 × 10⁹ g cm^-2 following the exhaustion by steady burning of the accreted hydrogen. The Swift/BAT data from the first 20 s of the burst provide indications of a photospheric radius expansion phase. Assuming this is the case, we infer a source distance of d = 4.2 ± 0.5 kpc.