No Arabic abstract
To look for possible phenomenological connections between pulsars timing properties and emissions from pulsar wind nebulae and their pulsars, we studied the power-law component of the X-ray emissions from 35 pulsar wind nebulae which have a detected pulsar in X-rays. Our major results are in the following: (1) The power-law component of the X-ray luminosities, in the energy range from 0.5 keV to 8 keV, of the nebulae and of the pulsar both show a strong correlation with the pulsar spin-down power ($dot{E}$), consistent with earlier studies. However, equally significant correlations with the magnetic field strength at the light cylinder ($B_{rm lc}$) are also found. The similar significance level of the correlations with $dot{E}$ and with $B_{rm lc}$ suggests that not only $dot{E}$ but also $B_{rm lc}$ plays an important role in understanding these power-law emissions. (2) Thermal X-ray emissions are detected in 12 pulsars among the 35 samples. With derived temperature as one additional variable, we found that the photon indices of pulsars non-thermal X-ray power-law spectra can be well described by a linear function of $log P$, $logdot{P}$ and temperature logarithm $log T$. It indicates that the surface temperature of neutron stars plays an important role in determining the energy distribution of the radiating pair plasma in pulsars magnetospheres.
During the search for counterparts of very-high-energy gamma-ray sources, we serendipitously discovered large, extended, low surface brightness emission from PWNe around pulsars with the ages up to ~100 kyrs, a discovery made possible by the low and stable background of the Suzaku X-ray satellite. A systematic study of a sample of 8 of these PWNe, together with Chandra datasets, has revealed us that the nebulae keep expanding up to for ~100 kyrs, although time scale of the synchrotron X-ray emission is only ~60 yr for typical magnetic fields of 100 microG. Our result suggests that the accelerated electrons up to ~80 TeV can escape from the PWNe without losing most energies. Moreover, in order to explain the observed correlation between the X-ray size and the pulsar spindwon age, the magnetic field strength in the PWNe must decrease with time.
The high sensitivity of the Fermi-LAT (Large Area Telescope) offers the first opportunity to study faint and extended GeV sources such as pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe). After one year of observation the LAT detected and identified three pulsar wind nebulae: the Crab Nebula, Vela-X and the PWN inside MSH 15-52. In the meantime, the list of LAT detected pulsars increased steadily. These pulsars are characterized by high energy loss rates from ~3 times 10^{33} erg s$^{-1}$ to 5 times 10$^{38}$ erg s$^{-1}$ and are therefore likely to power a PWN. This paper summarizes the search for PWNe in the off-pulse windows of 54 LAT-detected pulsars using 16 months of survey observations. Ten sources show significant emission, seven of these likely being of magnetospheric origin. The detection of significant emission in the off-pulse interval offers new constraints on the gamma-ray emitting regions in pulsar magnetospheres. The three other sources with significant emission are the Crab Nebula, Vela-X and a new pulsar wind nebula candidate associated with the LAT pulsar PSR J1023-5746, coincident with the TeV source HESS J1023-575. We further explore the association between the H.E.S.S. and the Fermi source by modeling its spectral energy distribution. Flux upper limits derived for the 44 remaining sources are used to provide new constraints on famous PWNe that have been detected at keV and/or TeV energies.
We have carried out a detailed study of the spectral nature of six pulsars surrounded by Pulsar wind nebulae (PWN). The pulsar flux density were estimated using the interferometric imaging technique of the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope at three frequencies 325 MHz, 610 MHz and 1280 MHz. The spectra showed a turnover around gigahertz frequency in four out of six pulsars. It has been suggested that the gigahertz peaked spectra (GPS) in pulsars arises due to thermal absorption of the pulsar emission in surrounding medium like PWN, HII regions, Supernova remnants, etc. The relatively high incidence of GPS behaviour in pulsars surrounded by PWN impart further credence to this view. The pulsar J1747$-$2958 associated with the well known Mouse nebula was also observed in our sample and exhibited GPS behaviour. The pulsar was detected as a point source in the high resolution images. However, the pulsed emission was not seen in the phased array mode. It is possible that the pulsed emission was affected by extreme scattering causing considerable smearing of the emission at low radio frequencies. The GPS spectra were modeled using the thermal free-free absorption and the estimated absorber properties were largely consistent with PWN. The spatial resolution of the images made it unlikely that the point source associated with J1747$-$2958 was the compact head of the PWN, but the synchrotron self-absorption seen in such sources was a better fit to the estimated spectral shape.
Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe) represent the most numerous population of TeV sources in our Galaxy. These sources, some of which emit very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-rays, are believed to be related to the young and energetic pulsars that power highly magnetized nebulae (a few $mu$G to a few hundred $mu$G). In this scenario, particles are accelerated to VHE along their expansion into the pulsar surroundings, or at the shocks produced in collisions of the winds with the surrounding medium. Those energetic pulsars can be traced using observations with the Fermi-LAT detector. The MAGIC Collaboration has carried out deep observations of PWNe around high spin-down power Fermi pulsars. We study the PWN features in the context of the already known TeV PWNe. We present here the analysis accomplished with three selected PWNe: PSR J0631+1036, PSR J1954+2838 and PSR J1958+2845.
We present a statistical study of the non-thermal X-ray emission of 27 young rotation powered pulsars (RPPs) and 24 pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) by using the Chandra and the XMM-Newton observations, which with the high spatial resolutions enable us to spatially resolve pulsars from their surrounding PWNe. We obtain the X-ray luminosities and spectra separately for RPPs and PWNe, and then investigate their distribution and relation to each other as well as the relation with the pulsar rotational parameters. In the pair-correlation analysis we find that: (1) the X-ray (2-10 keV) luminosities of both pulsar and PWN (L_{psr} and L_{pwn}) display a strong correlation with pulsar spin down power Edot and characteristic age, and the scalings resulting from a simple linear fit to the data are L_{psr} propto Edot^{0.92 pm 0.04} and L_{pwn} propto Edot^{1.45 pm 0.08} (68% confidence level), respectively, however, both the fits are not statistically acceptable; (2) L_{psr} also shows a possible weak correlation with pulsar period P and period derivative Pdot, whereas L_{pwn} manifests a similar weak correlation with Pdot only; (3) The PWN photon index Gamma_{pwn} is positively correlated with L_{pwn} and L_{pwn}/Edot. We also found that the PWN X-ray luminosity is typically 1 to 10 times larger than that from the underlying pulsar, and the PWN photon indices span a range of ~1.5 to ~2. The statistic study of PWN spectral properties supports the particle wind model in which the X-ray emitting electrons are accelerated by the termination shock of the wind.