SPIN-DOWN MEASUREMENT OF PSR J1852+0040 IN KESTEVEN 79: CENTRAL COMPACT OBJECTS AS ANTI-MAGNETARS

By J. Halpern, E. Gotthelf. 2009

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Using XMM-Newton and Chandra, we achieved phase-connected timing of the 105 ms X-ray pulsar PSR J1852+0040 that provides the first measurement of the spin-down rate of a member of the class of central compact objects (CCOs) in supernova remnants. We measure , and find no evidence for timing noise or variations in X-ray flux over 4.8 year. In the dipole spin-down formalism, this implies a surface magnetic field strength Bs = 3.1 × 1010 G, the smallest ever measured for a young neutron star, and consistent with being a fossil field. In combination with upper limits on Bs from other CCO pulsars, this is strong evidence in favor of the “anti-magnetar” explanation for their low luminosity and lack of magnetospheric activity or synchrotron nebulae. While this dipole field is small, it can prevent accretion of sufficient fall-back material so that the observed X-ray luminosity of Lx = 5.3 × 1033(d/7.1 kpc)2 erg s−1 must instead be residual cooling. The spin-down luminosity of PSR J1852+0040, erg s−1, is an order of magnitude smaller than Lx. Fitting of the X-ray spectrum to two blackbodies finds small emitting radii, R1 = 1.9 km and R2 = 0.45 km, for components of kT1 = 0.30 keV and kT2 = 0.52 keV, respectively. Such small, hot regions are ubiquitous among CCOs, and are not yet understood in the context of the anti-magnetar picture because anisotropic surface temperature is usually attributed to the effects of strong magnetic fields.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Geophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2aaf310a1f6a365900ead3857b4eb73509343a28

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Citations in the corpus

On the nature and evolution of the unique binary pulsar J1903+0327 (2010, background): “There are several reasons why PSR J1903+0327 appears to be a normal MSP (i.e., spun up by accretion of mass from a companion): a) its spin period is typical of that of MSPs and ∼8 times shorter than that of the fastest young pulsar, PSR J0537−6910, near the N157B supernova remnant in the Large Magel”
DIRECT OBSERVATION OF THE COOLING OF THE CASSIOPEIA A NEUTRON STAR (2010, methodology): “Timing investigations using the Chandra HRC and XMM-Newton have failed to identify pulsations down to a pulsed fraction level of <12% (Murray et al. 2002; Mereghetti et al. 2002; Ransom 2002; Halpern & Gotthelf 2010), indicating that the emission is probably from the entire surface.”