No Arabic abstract
Swift/BAT detected the first burst from 1E 1841-045 in May 2010 with intermittent burst activity recorded through at least July 2011. Here we present Swift and Fermi/GBM observations of this burst activity and search for correlated changes to the persistent X-ray emission of the source. The T90 durations of the bursts range between 18-140 ms, comparable to other magnetar burst durations, while the energy released in each burst ranges between (0.8 - 25)E38 erg, which is in the low side of SGR bursts. We find that the bursting activity did not have a significant effect on the persistent flux level of the source. We argue that the mechanism leading to this sporadic burst activity in 1E 1841-045 might not involve large scale restructuring (either crustal or magnetospheric) as seen in other magnetar sources.
We report the discovery of non-thermal pulsed X-ray/soft gamma-ray emission up to about 150 keV from the anomalous X-ray pulsar AXP 1E 1841-045 located near the centre of supernova remnant Kes 73 using RXTE PCA and HEXTE data. The morphology of the double-peaked pulse profile changes rapidly with energy from 2 keV up to about 8 keV, above which the pulse shape remains more or less stable. The pulsed spectrum is very hard, its shape above 10 keV can be described well by a power law with a photon index of 0.94 +/- 0.16. 1E 1841-045 is the first AXP for which such very-hard pulsed emission has been detected, which points to an origin in the magnetosphere of a magnetar.
We have carried out a search for the optical and infrared counterpart of the Anomalous X-ray Pulsar 1E 1841-045, which is located at the center of the supernova remnant Kes73. We present the first deep optical and infrared images of the field of 1E 1841-045, as well as optical spectroscopy results that exclude the brightest objects in the error circle as possible counterparts. A few of the more reddened objects in this region can be considered as particularly interesting candidates, in consideration of the distance and absorption expected from the association with Kes73. The strong interstellar absorption in the direction of the source does not allow to completely exclude the presence of main sequence massive companions.
We report on a 350-ks NuSTAR observation of the magnetar 1E 1841-045 taken in 2013 September. During the observation, NuSTAR detected six bursts of short duration, with $T_{90}<1$ s. An elevated level of emission tail is detected after the brightest burst, persisting for $sim$1 ks. The emission showed a power-law decay with a temporal index of 0.5 before returning to the persistent emission level. The long observation also provided detailed phase-resolved spectra of the persistent X-ray emission of the source. By comparing the persistent spectrum with that previously reported, we find that the source hard-band emission has been stable over approximately 10 years. The persistent hard X-ray emission is well fitted by a coronal outflow model, where $e^{+/-}$ pairs in the magnetosphere upscatter thermal X-rays. Our fit of phase-resolved spectra allowed us to estimate the angle between the rotational and magnetic dipole axes of the magnetar, $alpha_{mag}=0.25$, the twisted magnetic flux, $2.5times10^{26}rm G cm^2$, and the power released in the twisted magnetosphere, $L_j=6times10^{36}rm erg s^{-1}$. Assuming this model for the hard X-ray spectrum, the soft X-ray component is well fit by a two-blackbody model, with the hotter blackbody consistent with the footprint of the twisted magnetic field lines on the star. We also report on the 3-year Swift monitoring observations obtained since 2011 July. The soft X-ray spectrum remained stable during this period, and the timing behavior was noisy, with large timing residuals.
We provide a new distance estimate to the supernova remnant (SNR) Kes 73 and its associated anomalous X-ray pulsar (AXP) 1E 1841-045. 21 cm HI images and HI absorption/ emission spectra from new VLA observations, and 13CO emission spectra of Kes 73 and two adjacent compact HII regions (G27.276+0.148 and G27.491+0.189) are analyzed. The HI images show prominent absorption features associated with Kes 73 and the HII regions. The absorption appears up to the tangent point velocity giving a lower distance limit to Kes 73 of 7.5 kpc, which has previously been given as the upper limit. Also, G27.276+0.148 and G27.491+0.189 are at the far kinematic distances of their radio recombination line velocities. There is prominent HI emission in the range 80--90 km/s for all three objects. The two HII regions show HI absorption at ~ 84 km/s, but there is no absorption in the Kes 73 absorption spectrum. This implies an upper distance limit of ~ 9.8 kpc to Kes 73. This corrected larger distance to Kes 73/ AXP 1E 1841-045 system leads to a refined age of the SNR of 500 to 1000 yr, and a ~ 50% larger AXP X-ray luminosity.
We report on optical and infrared observations of the anomalous X-ray pulsar (AXP) 1E 1048.1-5937, made during its ongoing X-ray flare which started in 2007 March. We detected the source in the optical I and near-infrared Ks bands in two ground-based observations and obtained deep flux upper limits from four observations, including one with the Spitzer Space Telescope at 4.5 and 8.0 microns. The detections indicate that the source was approximately 1.3--1.6 magnitudes brighter than in 2003--2006, when it was at the tail of a previous similar X-ray flare. Similar related flux variations have been seen in two other AXPs during their X-ray outbursts, suggesting common behavior for large X-ray flux variation events in AXPs. The Spitzer flux 1E 1048.1-5937 limits are sufficiently deep that we can exclude mid-infrared emission similar to that from the AXP 4U 0142+61, which has been interpreted as arising from a dust disk around the AXP. The optical/near-infrared emission from probably has a magnetospheric origin. The similarity in the flux spectra of 4U 0142+61 and 1E 1048.1-5937 challenges the dust disk model proposed for the latter.