Back to a Rotation-powered Pulsar: Current Status of PSR J1846-0258 in X-rays
Abstract
The young pulsar J1846-0258 is the only known transition object between a rotation-powered pulsar and a magnetar. After its magnetar-like outburst in 2006, our Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) monitoring found no further bursts or glitches, albeit with larger timing noise than the pre-burst level, and the pulsed flux has now returned to the quiescent value. We report new Chandra observations taken in mid-2009 that show consistent results with the RXTE findings. The pulsar spectrum and flux level are now comparable to those obtained from the Chandra observation in 2000, with a power-law index of 1.1 +/-0.1, significantly harder than the spectrum in 2006 immediately after the outburst. There is a marginal detection of a thermal component in the pulsar spectrum with a blackbody temperature kT=0.16 +/-0.1 keV. The surrounding pulsar wind nebula exhibits long-term morphological variability, but we found no indication of expansion or bulk motion.
- Publication:
-
38th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010cosp...38.2781N