Radiation efficiencies of the pulsars detected in the optical range.
Abstract
Using available multiwavelength data for the pulsars of different ages detected in the optical range we analyze the efficiencies of the conversion of the pulsar spindown power dot{E} into the observed non-thermal luminosity L in different spectral domains. We find that these pulsars, whose distances are known with the accuracy better than 10% based on the parallax measurements, show significantly non-monotonic dependences of the optical and X-ray efficiencies (η = L/dot{E}) versus pulsar age with a pronounced minimum at the beginning of the middle-age epoch and comparably high efficiencies of younger and older pulsars. Further multiwavelength studies, including the optical range, are necessary to understand why old radio pulsars can be as efficient in a high energy range as young Crab-like objects. In addition, we find a strong correlation between the optical and 2-10 keV X-ray luminosities of the pulsars that implies the same origin of their nonthermal emission in both spectral domains.
- Publication:
-
35th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2004
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.astro-ph/0410152
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/0410152
- Bibcode:
- 2004cosp...35.1914Z
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 7 pages, 6 figures, Submitted to: Advances in Space Research, Proceedings of the 35th. COSPAR Scientific Assembly (Paris, France 18-25 July 2004), revised version