Vela pulsar wind nebula x-rays are polarized to near the synchrotron limit
Abstract
Pulsar wind nebulae are formed when outflows of relativistic electrons and positrons hit the surrounding supernova remnant or interstellar medium at a shock front. The Vela pulsar wind nebula is powered by a young pulsar (B0833-45, age 11 kyr) and located inside an extended structure called Vela X, itself inside the supernova remnant. Previous X-ray observations revealed two prominent arcs, bisected by a jet and counter jet. Radio maps have shown high linear polarization of 60 per cent in the outer regions of the nebula. Here we report X-ray observation of the inner part of the nebula, where polarization can exceed 60 per cent at the leading edge, which approaches the theoretical limit of what can be produced by synchrotron emission. We infer that, in contrast with the case of the supernova remnant, the electrons in the pulsar wind nebula are accelerated with little or no turbulence in a highly uniform magnetic field.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2303.12437,
title = {Vela pulsar wind nebula x-rays are polarized to near the synchrotron limit},
author = {Fei Xie and Alessandro Di Marco and Fabio La Monaca and Kuan Liu and Fabio Muleri and Niccolò Bucciantini and Roger W. Romani and Enrico Costa and John Rankin and Paolo Soffitta and Matteo Bachetti and Niccolò Di Lalla and Sergio Fabiani and Riccardo Ferrazzoli and Shuichi Gunji and Luca Latronico and Michela Negro and Nicola Omodei and Maura Pilia and Alessio Trois and Eri Watanabe and Iván Agudo and Lucio A. Antonelli and Luca Baldini and Wayne H. Baumgartner and Ronaldo Bellazzini and Stefano Bianchi and Stephen D. Bongiorno and Raffaella Bonino and Alessandro Brez and Fiamma Capitanio and Simone Castellano and Elisabetta Cavazzuti and Stefano Ciprini and Alessandra De Rosa and Ettore Del Monte and Laura Di Gesu and Immacolata Donnarumma and Victor Doroshenko and Michal Dovčiak and Steven R. Ehlert and Teruaki Enoto and Yuri Evangelista and Javier A. Garcia and Kiyoshi Hayashida and Jeremy Heyl and Wataru Iwakiri and Svetlana G. Jorstad and Vladimir Karas and Takao Kitaguchi and Jeffery J. Kolodziejczak and Henric Krawczynski and Ioannis Liodakis and Simone Maldera and Alberto Manfreda and Frédéric Marin and Andrea Marinucci and Alan P. Marscher and Herman L. Marshall and Francesco Massaro and Giorgio Matt and Ikuyuki Mitsuishi and Tsunefumi Mizuno and C. -Y. Ng and Stephen L. O'Dell and Chiara Oppedisano and Alessandro Papitto and George G. Pavlov and Abel L. Peirson and Matteo Perri and Melissa Pesce-Rollins and Pierre-Olivier Petrucci and Andrea Possenti and Juri Poutanen and Simonetta Puccetti and Brian D. Ramsey and Ajay Ratheesh and Carmelo Sgró and Patrick Slane and Gloria Spandre and Toru Tamagawa and Fabrizio Tavecchio and Roberto Taverna and Yuzuru Tawara and Allyn F. Tennant and Nicolas E. Thomas and Francesco Tombesi and Sergey S. Tsygankov and Roberto Turolla and Jacco Vink and Martin C. Weisskopf and Kinwah Wu and Silvia Zane},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.12437},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
27 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables, author's version of the paper accepted for publication in Nature