Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-l4dxg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T19:52:52.696Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

X-ray Studies of the Pulsar Wind Nebula Around PSR B0540-69

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2016

R. Petre ,
U. Hwang ,
S. S. Holt  and
R. M. Williams
R. Petre
Affiliation:
Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
U. Hwang
Affiliation:
Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
S. S. Holt
Affiliation:
F. W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, MA 02492, USA
R. M. Williams
Affiliation:
Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The pulsar wind nebula (PWN) surrounding the 50-ms pulsar B0540-69 in the Large Magellanic Cloud shares many properties with the Crab Nebula, the canonical Galactic PWN. We have used the ACIS instrument on the Chandra X-ray Observatory to perform spatially resolved spectroscopy of the PWN. The spectrum of the inner 10″ is characterized by a simple power law, with a spectral index that steepens strongly with radius. Outside the central 10″ the spectra also require a thermal component. This diameter corresponds to a shell detected in [OIII], suggesting that this shell represents a skin around the PWN, in analogy to the Crab. We infer the value of several key PWN parameters, including σ, the average ratio of electromagnetic to particle flux.

Type
Part 4: Pulsar Wind Nebulae and Their Environments
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 218: Young Neutrons Stars and their Environments , 2004 , pp. 189 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2004 

References

Hwang, U., Petre, R., Holt, S. S., & Szymkowiak, A. E. 2001, ApJ, 560, 742.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reynolds, S. P. 1985, ApJ, 291, 152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar