X-ray Emission From Vela-like Pulsar B1800-21 And Other Young Pulsars Observed With Chandra.

X-ray observations of spin-powered pulsars and their wind nebulae (PWNe) provide valuable diagnostics of emission mechanisms and acceleration processes operating in pulsar magnetospheres and winds. We present a detailed analysis of a 30 ks Chandra observation of the Vela-like pulsar B1800-21 and its field, which includes the recently discovered VHE source HESS J1800-216. The shape of a compact, about 12 arcsec, PWN around PSR B1800-21 can be interpreted as a torus whose axis is approximately co-aligned with the direction of the pulsar's proper motion. Similar to the Vela PWN, there is a fainter extended component of the B1800-20 PWN, which shows substantial asymmetry with respect to the direction of the proper motion, implying an inhomogeneous ISM in the pulsar's vicinity. We also present Chandra observations of a few other young pulsars. Extended X-ray emission being clearly resolved around four of them. The only undetected pulsar in this sample is PSR J1913+1011, surprisingly underluminous for a 170-kyr-old cooling neutron star. To provide a broader view, we compare our results with the X-ray properties of other 50+ spin-powered pulsars observed with Chandra, which we compiled into a convenient web-based database.

This work was supported by NASA grants NAG5-10865 and NAS8-01128 and Chandra award SV4-74018.