A Broadband X-Ray Study of the Rabbit Pulsar Wind Nebula Powered by PSR J1418-6058
Abstract
We report on broadband X-ray properties of the Rabbit pulsar wind nebula (PWN) associated with the pulsar PSR J1418-6058 using archival Chandra and XMM-Newton data, as well as a new NuSTAR observation. NuSTAR data above 10 keV allowed us to detect the 110 ms spin period of the pulsar, characterize its hard X-ray pulse profile, and resolve hard X-ray emission from the PWN after removing contamination from the pulsar and other overlapping point sources. The extended PWN was detected up to ~20 keV and is described well by a power-law model with a photon index Γ ≈ 2. The PWN shape does not vary significantly with energy, and its X-ray spectrum shows no clear evidence of softening away from the pulsar. We modeled the spatial profile of X-ray spectra and broadband spectral energy distribution in the radio to TeV band to infer the physical properties of the PWN. We found that a model with low magnetic field strength (B ~ 10 μG) and efficient diffusion (D ~ 1027 cm2 s-1) fits the PWN data well. The extended hard X-ray and TeV emission, associated respectively with synchrotron radiation and inverse Compton scattering by relativistic electrons, suggest that particles are accelerated to very high energies (≳500 TeV), indicating that the Rabbit PWN is a Galactic PeVatron candidate.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- March 2023
- DOI:
- 10.3847/1538-4357/acba0e
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2302.03277
- Bibcode:
- 2023ApJ...945...66P
- Keywords:
-
- High energy astrophysics;
- Pulsar wind nebulae;
- Rotation powered pulsars;
- Spectral energy distribution;
- Astronomy data analysis;
- Gamma-ray sources;
- 739;
- 2215;
- 1408;
- 2129;
- 1858;
- 633;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
- E-Print:
- 21 pages, 10 figures. ApJ accepted