English

Deep optical observations of unusual neutron star Calvera with the GTC

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2016-11-14 v2

Abstract

Calvera is an unusual isolated neutron star with pure thermal X-ray spectrum typical for central compact objects in supernova remnants. On the other hand, its rotation period and spin-down rate are typical for ordinary rotation-powered pulsars. It was discovered and studied in X-rays and not yet detected in other spectral domains. We present deep optical imaging of the Calvera field obtained with the Gran Telescopio Canarias in gg' and ii' bands. Within 1\approx 1^{\prime\prime} vicinity of Calvera, we detected two point-like objects invisible at previous shallow observations. However, accurate astrometry showed that none of them can be identified with the pulsar. We put new upper limits on its optical brightness of g>27.87g' > 27.87 and i>26.84i' > 26.84. We also reanalyzed all available archival X-ray data on Calvera. Comparison of the Calvera thermal emission parameters and upper limits on optical and non-thermal X-ray emission with respective data on rotation-powered pulsars shows that Calvera might belong to the class of ordinary middle-aged pulsars, if we assume that its distance is in the range of 1.551.5-5 kpc.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1608.03005,
  title  = {Deep optical observations of unusual neutron star Calvera with the GTC},
  author = {Yury Shibanov and Andrey Danilenko and Sergey Zharikov and Peter Shternin and Dima Zyuzin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.03005},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

20 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables