English

Evolution of the X-ray Profile of the Crab Pulsar

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2019-09-12 v1

Abstract

Using the archive data from the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer ({\sl RXTE}), we have studied the evolution of the X-ray profile of the Crab pulsar in a time span of 11 years. The X-ray profiles, as characterized by a few parameters, changed slightly but significantly in these years: the separation of the two peaks increased with a rate 0.88±0.20\textordmasculine0.88\pm0.20\,\textordmasculine\,per century, the flux ratio of the second pulse to the first pulse decreased with (3.64±0.86)×102(3.64\pm0.86)\times10^{-2}\,per century, and the pulse widths of the two pulses descended with 1.44±0.15\textordmasculine1.44\pm0.15\,\textordmasculine\, and 1.09±0.73\textordmasculine1.09\pm0.73\,\textordmasculine\,per century, respectively. The evolutionary trends of the above parameters are similar to the radio results, but the values are different. We briefly discussed the constraints of these X-ray properties on the geometry of the emission region of this pulsar.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.04809,
  title  = {Evolution of the X-ray Profile of the Crab Pulsar},
  author = {M. Y. Ge and L. L. Yan and F. J. Lu and S. J. Zheng and J. P. Yuan and H. Tong and S. N. Zhang and Y. Lu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.04809},
  year   = {2019}
}