English

First X-ray observations of the young pulsar J1357-6429

Astrophysics 2009-11-13 v3

Abstract

The first short Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of the young and energetic pulsar J1357-6429 provided strong indications of a tail-like pulsar-wind nebula associated with this object, as well as pulsations of its X-ray flux with a pulsed fraction above 50% and a thermal component dominating at lower photon energies (below 2 keV). The elongated nebula is very compact in size and may be interpreted as evidence for a pulsar jet. The thermal radiation is most plausibly emitted from the entire neutron star surface of a 10 km radius and a 1.0+/-0.1 K temperature, covered with a magnetized hydrogen atmosphere. At higher energies the pulsar's emission is of a nonthermal (magnetospheric) origin, with a power-law spectrum of a photon index of 1.1-1.3. This makes the X-ray properties of PSR J1357-6429 very similar to those of the youngest pulsars J1119-6127 and Vela with a detected thermal radiation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0703802,
  title  = {First X-ray observations of the young pulsar J1357-6429},
  author = {Vyacheslav E. Zavlin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0703802},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Minor changes, including the reference to Esposito et al. (2007 A&A, 467, L45). Accepted by ApJ Letters