A Mid-Infrared Counterpart to the Magnetar 1E 2259+586
Abstract
We report the discovery of a 4.5 um counterpart to the anomalous X-ray pulsar (magnetar) 1E 2259+586 with the Spitzer Space Telescope. The mid-infrared flux density is 6.3+/-1.0 uJy at 4.5 um and <20 uJy (at 95% confidence) at 8 um, or 0.02% of the 2-10 keV X-ray flux (corrected for extinction). Combining our Spitzer measurements with previously published near-infrared data, we show that the overall infrared emission from 1E 2259+586 is qualitatively similar to that from the magnetar 4U 0142+61. Therefore the passive X-ray-heated dust disk model originally developed for 4U 0142+61 might also apply to 1E 2259+586. However, the IR data from this source can also be fitted by a simple power-law spectrum as might be expected from magnetospheric emission.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0906.1604,
title = {A Mid-Infrared Counterpart to the Magnetar 1E 2259+586},
author = {David L. Kaplan and Deepto Chakrabarty and Zhongxiang Wang and Stefanie Wachter},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0906.1604},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in ApJ. 6 pages, 4 figures, uses emulateapj