📝 SummarXiv

Abstract

Ultraluminous X-ray pulsars (ULXPs) serve as unique astrophysical laboratories, offering critical insights into accretion physics under extreme conditions, such as strong magnetic fields and super-Eddington accretion rates. Additionally, the nature of pulsars, i.e., the equation of state of supranuclear matter, is still a matter of intense debate, basing on either conventional neutron stars or strange stars in the litterateurs. In this work, we investigate accretion columns of ULXPs based on the strangeon-star model, focusing on the thermal mound at the column base. Accounting for Coulomb and strangeness barriers of the strangeon stars, we find that the mound can reach $0.7-0.95\,\rm km$ in height with temperatures above $10^9\, \rm K$, enabling substantial neutrino emission via electron-positron annihilation. Heat transport along the strangeon star surface contributes a luminosity of $10^{36} \, \rm erg\, s^{-1} $, independent of the accretion rate. At low accretion rates ($< 10^{20}\, \rm g\,s^{-1}$), photons dominate the luminosity, while at higher rates ($> 10^{21}\, \rm g\, s^{-1}$), photon trapping makes neutrino emission the main cooling channel, with total luminosity exceeding photon emission, which saturates near $10^{41}\, \rm erg\,s^{-1}$. Estimating neutrino fluxes at Earth, we find that only the nearest ULXP, Swift J0243.6$+$6124, could produce a marginally detectable signal, while most extragalactic sources remain well below background levels. These results emphasize the key role of the thermal mound and strangeon star properties in determining accretion luminosities and neutrino emission, offering insights for future modeling and observations of ULXPs.