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The Be X-ray pulsar, SMC X-3 underwent a giant outburst from 2016 August to2017 March, which was monitored with the Swift satellite. During the outburst,its broadband flux increased dramatically, and the unabsorbed X-ray luminosityreached an extreme value of $\sim 10^{39}$ erg/s around August 24. Using theSwift/XRT data, we measure the observed pulse frequency of the neutron star tocompute the orbital parameters of the binary system. After applying the orbitalcorrections to Swift observations, we find that the spin frequency increasessteadily from 128.02 mHz on August 10 and approach to spin equilibrium $\sim128.74$ mHz in 2017 January with an unabsorbed luminosity of $L_{\rm X} \sim2\times10^{37}$ erg/s, indicating a strong dipolar magnetic field $B \sim6.8\times10^{12}$ G at the neutron star surface. The spin-up rate is tightlycorrelated with its X-ray luminosity during the super-Eddington outburst. Thepulse profile in the Swift/XRT data is variable, showing double peaks at theearly stage of outburst and then merging into a single peak at low luminosity.Additionally, we report that a low temperature ($kT \sim 0.2$ keV) thermalcomponent emerges in the phase-averaged spectra as the flux decays, and it maybe produced from the outer truncated disk or the boundary layer between theexterior flow and the magnetosphere.

Swift observations of SMC X-3 during its 2016-2017 super-Eddington outburst