An official website of the United States government
Abstract Pulsar halos are regions around middle-aged pulsars extending out to tens of parsecs. The large extent of the halos and well-defined central cosmic-ray accelerators make this new class of Galactic sources an ideal laboratory for studying cosmic-ray transport. LHAASO J0621+3755 is a candidate pulsar halo associated with the middle-aged gamma-ray pulsar PSR J0622+3749. We observed LHAASO J0621+3755 with VERITAS and XMM-Newton in the TeV and X-ray bands, respectively. For this work, we developed a novel background estimation technique for imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope observations of such extended sources. No halo emission was detected with VERITAS (0.3–10 TeV) or XMM-Newton (2–7 keV) within 1∘and around PSR J0622+3749, respectively. Combined with the LHAASO Kilometer Square Array (KM2A) and Fermi-LAT data, VERITAS flux upper limits establish a spectral break at ∼1–10 TeV, a unique feature compared with Geminga, the most studied pulsar halo. We model the gamma-ray spectrum and LHAASO-KM2A surface brightness as inverse Compton emission and find suppressed diffusion around the pulsar, similar to Geminga. A smaller diffusion suppression zone and harder electron injection spectrum than Geminga are necessary to reproduce the spectral cutoff. A magnetic field ≤1μG is required by our XMM-Newton observation and synchrotron spectral modeling, consistent with Geminga. Our findings support slower diffusion and lower magnetic field around pulsar halos than the Galactic averages, hinting at magnetohydrodynamic turbulence around pulsars. Additionally, we report the detection of an X-ray point source spatially coincident with PSR J0622+3749, whose periodicity is consistent with the gamma-ray spin period of 333.2 ms. The soft spectrum of this source suggests a thermal origin.
more »
« less
Geminga’s pulsar halo: An X-ray view
Geminga is the first pulsar around which a remarkable gamma-ray halo extending over a few degrees was discovered at TeV energies by MILAGRO and HAWC and later by H.E.S.S., and byFermi-LAT in the GeV band. More middle-aged pulsars have exhibited gamma-ray halos, and they are now recognised as an emerging class of Galactic gamma-ray sources. The emission appears in the late evolution stage of pulsars, and is most plausibly explained by inverse Compton scattering of CMB and interstellar photons by relativistic electrons and positrons escaping from the pulsar wind nebulae. These observations pose a number of theoretical challenges, particularly the origin of the inferred, significantly lower effective diffusion coefficients around the pulsar when compared to typical Galactic values. Tackling these questions requires constraining the ambient magnetic field properties, which can be achieved through X-ray observations. If the gamma-ray halos originate from a distribution of highly energetic electrons, synchrotron losses in the ambient magnetic fields of the same particles are expected to produce a diffuse X-ray emission with a similar spatial extension. We present the most comprehensive X-ray study of the Geminga pulsar halo to date, utilising archival data fromXMM-NewtonandNuSTAR. Our X-ray analysis covers a broad bandwidth (0.5 − 79 keV) and large field of view (θ ∼ 4°) for the first time. This was achieved by accurately measuring the background over the entire field of view, and taking into account both focused and stray-light X-ray photons from the pulsar halo withNuSTAR. We find no significant emission and set robust constraints on the X-ray halo flux. These are translated to stringent constraints on the ambient magnetic field strength and the diffusion coefficient by using a physical model considering particle injection, diffusion, and cooling over the pulsar’s lifetime, which is tuned by fitting multi-wavelength data. Our novel methodology for modelling and searching for synchrotron X-ray halos can be applied to other pulsar halo candidates.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2110497
- PAR ID:
- 10640954
- Publisher / Repository:
- Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Volume:
- 689
- ISSN:
- 0004-6361
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- A326
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract G106.3+2.7, commonly considered to be a composite supernova remnant (SNR), is characterized by a boomerang-shaped pulsar wind nebula (PWN) and two distinct (“head” and “tail”) regions in the radio band. A discovery of very-high-energy gamma-ray emission (Eγ> 100 GeV) followed by the recent detection of ultrahigh-energy gamma-ray emission (Eγ> 100 TeV) from the tail region suggests that G106.3+2.7 is a PeVatron candidate. We present a comprehensive multiwavelength study of the Boomerang PWN (100″ around PSR J2229+6114) using archival radio and Chandra data obtained two decades ago, a new NuSTAR X-ray observation from 2020, and upper limits on gamma-ray fluxes obtained by Fermi-LAT and VERITAS observatories. The NuSTAR observation allowed us to detect a 51.67 ms spin period from the pulsar PSR J2229+6114 and the PWN emission characterized by a power-law model with Γ = 1.52 ± 0.06 up to 20 keV. Contrary to the previous radio study by Kothes et al., we prefer a much lower PWNB-field (B∼ 3μG) and larger distance (d∼ 8 kpc) based on (1) the nonvarying X-ray flux over the last two decades, (2) the energy-dependent X-ray size of the PWN resulting from synchrotron burn-off, and (3) the multiwavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) data. Our SED model suggests that the PWN is currently re-expanding after being compressed by the SNR reverse shock ∼1000 yr ago. In this case, the head region should be formed by GeV–TeV electrons injected earlier by the pulsar propagating into the low-density environment.more » « less
-
Abstract Extended very-high-energy (VHE; 0.1–100 TeV) γ -ray emission has been observed around several middle-aged pulsars and referred to as “TeV halos.” Their formation mechanism remains under debate. It is also unknown whether they are ubiquitous or related to a certain subgroup of pulsars. With 2321 days of observation, the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory detected VHE γ -ray emission at the location of the radio-quiet pulsar PSR J0359+5414 with >6 σ significance. By performing likelihood tests with different spectral and spatial models and comparing the TeV spectrum with multiwavelength observations of nearby sources, we show that this excess is consistent with a TeV halo associated with PSR J0359+5414, though future observation of HAWC and multiwavelength follow-ups are needed to confirm this nature. This new halo candidate is located in a noncrowded region in the outer galaxy. It shares similar properties to the other halos but its pulsar is younger and radio-quiet. Our observation implies that TeV halos could commonly exist around pulsars and their formation does not depend on the configuration of the pulsar magnetosphere.more » « less
-
Abstract We present 294 pulsars found in GeV data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Another 33 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) discovered in deep radio searches of LAT sources will likely reveal pulsations once phase-connected rotation ephemerides are achieved. A further dozen optical and/or X-ray binary systems colocated with LAT sources also likely harbor gamma-ray MSPs. This catalog thus reports roughly 340 gamma-ray pulsars and candidates, 10% of all known pulsars, compared to ≤11 known before Fermi. Half of the gamma-ray pulsars are young. Of these, the half that are undetected in radio have a broader Galactic latitude distribution than the young radio-loud pulsars. The others are MSPs, with six undetected in radio. Overall, ≥236 are bright enough above 50 MeV to fit the pulse profile, the energy spectrum, or both. For the common two-peaked profiles, the gamma-ray peak closest to the magnetic pole crossing generally has a softer spectrum. The spectral energy distributions tend to narrow as the spindown power decreases to its observed minimum near 1033erg s−1, approaching the shape for synchrotron radiation from monoenergetic electrons. We calculate gamma-ray luminosities when distances are available. Our all-sky gamma-ray sensitivity map is useful for population syntheses. The electronic catalog version provides gamma-ray pulsar ephemerides, properties, and fit results to guide and be compared with modeling results.more » « less
-
Abstract We report observations of the ultra-high-energy gamma-ray source LHAASO J2108+5157, utilizing VERITAS, HAWC, Fermi-LAT, and XMM-Newton. VERITAS has collected ∼40 hr of data that we used to set ULs to the emission above 200 GeV. The HAWC data, collected over ∼2400 days, reveal emission between 3 and 146 TeV, with a significance of 7.5σ, favoring an extended source model. The best-fit spectrum measured by HAWC is characterized by a simple power law with a spectral index of 2.45 ± 0.11stat. Fermi-LAT analysis finds a point source with a very soft spectrum in the LHAASO J2108+5157 region, consistent with the 4FGL-DR3 catalog results. The XMM-Newton analysis yields a null detection of the source in the 2–7 keV band. The broadband spectrum can be interpreted as a pulsar and a pulsar wind nebula system, where the GeV gamma-ray emission originates from an unidentified pulsar, and the X-ray and TeV emissions are attributed to synchrotron radiation and inverse Compton scattering of electrons accelerated within a pulsar wind nebula. In this leptonic scenario, our X-ray upper limit provides a stringent constraint on the magnetic field, which is ≲1.5μG.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450242
