English

Radio Study of Vela X Cocoon

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2026-03-03 v1

Abstract

The evolution of pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe) influences how high energy particles in the vicinity are generated and transport. The Vela PWN (only 300\sim300\,pc away), provides a rather rare case between young and well-evolved systems. We therefore performed new 6 and 16\,cm high-resolution observations of the Vela X Cocoon region with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA). The observations reveal a complex region with a 0.5\sim0.5^\circ major curved filament extending to far south from the pulsar, as well as other intersecting filaments and wisps. Our spectral analysis hints its connection with the PWN. Our results also found strongly linearly polarized emission, ordered and tangential BB-field to the filaments. We find the rotation measure (RM) and polarization fraction (PF) along the filament are anti-correlated with the total intensity. We develop a simple 3D model of a spiral filament to explain these, while the PF distribution requires external interpretations such as interaction with the reverse shock. Comparison with archival data suggests that large scale features like the major filament are generally stable and large motions near the X-ray filament, all these confirm the distinction between radio and X-ray features.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.02046,
  title  = {Radio Study of Vela X Cocoon},
  author = {Yihan Liu and Yu Zhang and C. -Y. Ng and Zijian Qiu and Sujie Lin and Lili Yang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.02046},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

10 pages, 8 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:59:30.832Z