NuSTAR Discovery of a Young, Energetic Pulsar Associated with the Luminous Gamma-ray Source HESS J1640-465
Abstract
We report the discovery of a 206 ms pulsar associated with the TeV γ-ray source HESS J1640–465 using the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) X-ray observatory. PSR J1640–4631 lies within the shell-type supernova remnant (SNR) G338.3–0.0, and coincides with an X-ray point source and putative pulsar wind nebula (PWN) previously identified in XMM-Newton and Chandra images. It is spinning down rapidly with period derivative Ṗ = 9.758(44) × 10^(–13), yielding a spin-down luminosity Ė = 4.4 × 10^(36) erg s^(–1), characteristic age τ_c ≡ P/2Ṗ = 3350 yr, and surface dipole magnetic field strength B_s = 1.4 × 10^(13) G. For the measured distance of 12 kpc to G338.3–0.0, the 0.2-10 TeV luminosity of HESS J1640–465 is 6% of the pulsar's present Ė. The Fermi source 1FHL J1640.5–4634 is marginally coincident with PSR J1640–4631, but we find no γ-ray pulsations in a search using five years of Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) data. The pulsar energetics support an evolutionary PWN model for the broadband spectrum of HESS J1640–465, provided that the pulsar's braking index is n ≈ 2, and that its initial spin period was P_0 ~ 15 ms.
Additional Information
© 2014 American Astronomical Society. Received 2013 December 19; accepted 2014 May 2; published 2014 June 3. This work made use of data from the NuSTAR mission, a project led by the California Institute of Technology, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This work has also made use of archival data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Partial support for E.V.G. and J.A.T were provided by NASA through Chandra Award Numbers SAOGO2-13097X and GO1-12068A, respectively, issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-03060. E.V.G acknowledges support by Fermi Guest Investigator Grant NNX12AO89G. Radio contours were obtained from Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) data provided by the University of Sydney with support from the Australian Research Council and the Science Foundation for Physics within The University of Sydney.Attached Files
Published - 0004-637X_788_2_155.pdf
Submitted - 1405.0465v1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 47302
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20140717-140551846
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- NASA
- SAOGO2-13097X
- NASA
- GO1-12068A
- NASA
- NAS8-03060
- NASA
- NNX12AO89G
- Created
-
2014-07-18Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- NuSTAR, Space Radiation Laboratory