English

Chandra View of Pulsar Wind Nebula Tori

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2014-11-20 v1

Abstract

The results from a systematic study of eleven pulsar wind nebulae with a torus structure observed with the Chandra X-ray observatory are presented. A significant observational correlation is found between the radius of the tori, r, and the spin-down luminosity of the pulsars, Edot. A logarithmic linear fit between the two parameters yields log r = (0.57 +- 0.22) log Edot -22.3 +- 8.0 with a correlation coefficient of 0.82, where the units of r and Edot are pc and ergs s^-1, respectively. The value obtained for the Edot dependency of r is consistent with a square root law, which is theoretically expected. This is the first observational evidence of this dependency, and provides a useful tool to estimate the spin-down energies of pulsars without direct detections of pulsation. Applications of this dependency to some other samples are also shown.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0912.1103,
  title  = {Chandra View of Pulsar Wind Nebula Tori},
  author = {Aya Bamba and Koji Mori and Shinpei Shibata},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0912.1103},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

8 pages, 2 figures, ApJ in press