TY - JOUR
T1 - A Chandra search for the pulsar wind nebula around PSR B1055-52
AU - Posselt, B.
AU - Spence, G.
AU - Pavlov, G. G.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
� 2015. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..
PY - 2015/10/1
Y1 - 2015/10/1
N2 - The nearby, middle-aged PSR B1055-52 has many properties in common with the Geminga pulsar. Motivated by the Geminga's enigmatic and prominent pulsar wind nebula (PWN), we searched for extended emission around PSR B1055-52 with Chandra ACIS. For an energy range 0.3-1 keV, we found a flux enhancement in a annulus around the pulsar. There is a slight asymmetry in the emission close, , to the pulsar. The excess emission has a luminosity of about 1029 erg s-1 in an energy range 0.3-8 keV for a distance of 350 pc. Overall, the faint extended emission around is consistent with a PWN of an aligned rotator moving away from us along the line of sight with supersonic velocity, but a contribution from a dust scattering halo cannot be excluded. Comparing the properties of other nearby, middle-aged pulsars, we suggest that the geometry - the orientations of rotation axis, magnetic field axis, and the sight-line - is the deciding factor for a pulsar to show a prominent PWN. We also report on an flux decrease of PSR B1055-52 between the 2000 XMM-Newton and our 2012 Chandra observation. We tentatively attribute this flux decrease to a cross-calibration problem, but further investigations of the pulsar are required to exclude actual intrinsic flux changes.
AB - The nearby, middle-aged PSR B1055-52 has many properties in common with the Geminga pulsar. Motivated by the Geminga's enigmatic and prominent pulsar wind nebula (PWN), we searched for extended emission around PSR B1055-52 with Chandra ACIS. For an energy range 0.3-1 keV, we found a flux enhancement in a annulus around the pulsar. There is a slight asymmetry in the emission close, , to the pulsar. The excess emission has a luminosity of about 1029 erg s-1 in an energy range 0.3-8 keV for a distance of 350 pc. Overall, the faint extended emission around is consistent with a PWN of an aligned rotator moving away from us along the line of sight with supersonic velocity, but a contribution from a dust scattering halo cannot be excluded. Comparing the properties of other nearby, middle-aged pulsars, we suggest that the geometry - the orientations of rotation axis, magnetic field axis, and the sight-line - is the deciding factor for a pulsar to show a prominent PWN. We also report on an flux decrease of PSR B1055-52 between the 2000 XMM-Newton and our 2012 Chandra observation. We tentatively attribute this flux decrease to a cross-calibration problem, but further investigations of the pulsar are required to exclude actual intrinsic flux changes.
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U2 - 10.1088/0004-637X/811/2/96
DO - 10.1088/0004-637X/811/2/96
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84945571800
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 811
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 96
ER -