The XMM-Newton view of the Crab
Abstract
We discuss the current X-ray view of the Crab Nebula and Pulsar, summarising our analysis of observations of the source with the EPIC-pn camera on board the XMM-Newton observatory. Different modes of EPIC-pn were combined in order to yield a complete scenario of the spectral properties of the Crab resolved in space and time (pulse phase). In addition we give a description of the special EPIC-pn Burst mode and guidance for data reduction in that mode. We analysed spectra for the nebula and pulsar separately in the 0.6-12.0 keV energy band. All data were processed with the SAS 6.0.0 XMM-Newton Scientific Analysis System package; models were fitted to the data with XSPEC 11. The high time resolution of EPIC-pn in its Burst mode (7 micros) was used for a phase resolved analysis of the pulsar spectrum, after determination of the period with epoch folding techniques. Data from the Small Window mode were processed and corrected for pile-up allowing for spectroscopy simultaneously resolved in space and time. The spatial variation of the spectrum over the entire region of the Crab shows a gradual spectral softening from the inner pulsar region to the outer nebula region with a variation in photon index, Gamma, from 2.0 to 2.4. Pulse phase resolved spectroscopy of the Crab Pulsar reveals a phase dependent modulation of the photon index in form of a significant hardening of the spectrum in the inter-peak phase from Gamma =1.7 during the pulse peak to Gamma =1.5.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0604097,
title = {The XMM-Newton view of the Crab},
author = {M. G. F. Kirsch and G. Schoenherr and E. Kendziorra and M. J. Freyberg and M. Martin and J. Wilms and K. Mukerjee and M. G. Breitfellner and M. J. S. Smith and R. Staubert},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0604097},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
9 pages