2023ApJ...945...66P -
Astrophys. J., 945, 66 (2023/March-1)
A Broadband X-Ray Study of the Rabbit Pulsar Wind Nebula Powered by PSR J1418-6058.
PARK J., KIM C., WOO J., AN H., MORI K., REYNOLDS S.P. and SAFI-HARB S.
Abstract (from CDS):
We report on broadband X-ray properties of the Rabbit pulsar wind nebula (PWN) associated with the pulsar PSR J1418-6058 using archival Chandra and XMM-Newton data, as well as a new NuSTAR observation. NuSTAR data above 10 keV allowed us to detect the 110 ms spin period of the pulsar, characterize its hard X-ray pulse profile, and resolve hard X-ray emission from the PWN after removing contamination from the pulsar and other overlapping point sources. The extended PWN was detected up to ∼20 keV and is described well by a power-law model with a photon index Γ ≈ 2. The PWN shape does not vary significantly with energy, and its X-ray spectrum shows no clear evidence of softening away from the pulsar. We modeled the spatial profile of X-ray spectra and broadband spectral energy distribution in the radio to TeV band to infer the physical properties of the PWN. We found that a model with low magnetic field strength (B ∼ 10 μG) and efficient diffusion (D ∼ 1027 cm2 s–1) fits the PWN data well. The extended hard X-ray and TeV emission, associated respectively with synchrotron radiation and inverse Compton scattering by relativistic electrons, suggest that particles are accelerated to very high energies (≳500 TeV), indicating that the Rabbit PWN is a Galactic PeVatron candidate.
Abstract Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
Journal keyword(s):
High-energy astrophysics - Pulsar wind nebulae - Rotation-powered pulsars - Spectral energy distribution - Astronomy data analysis - Gamma-ray sources
Simbad objects:
8
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