NuSTAR discovery of a young, energetic pulsar associated with the luminous gamma-ray source HESS J1640–465

Journal Article · Fri Jun 20 00:00:00 EDT 2014 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/788/2/155· OSTI ID:22356583

Gotthelf, E. V.; Halpern, J. P.; Hailey, J. C. ^[1]; Tomsick, J. A.; Boggs, S. E.; Craig, W. W. ^[2]; Gelfand, J. D. ^[3]; Harrison, F. A. ^[4]; Christensen, F. E. ^[5]; Kaspi, V. M. ^[6]; Stern, D. K. ^[7]

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1. Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, 550 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027-6601 (United States)
2. Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
3. NYU Abu Dhabi, PO Box 129188, Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates)
4. Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
5. DTU Space-National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Elektrovej 327, 2800 Lyngby (Denmark)
6. Department of Physics, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2T8 (Canada)
7. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)

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 P-dot = 9.758(44) × 10{sup –13}, yielding a spin-down luminosity E-dot = 4.4 × 10{sup 36} erg s{sup –1}, characteristic age τ{sub c}≡P/2 P-dot = 3350 yr, and surface dipole magnetic field strength B{sub s} = 1.4 × 10{sup 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 E-dot . 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 {sub 0} ∼ 15 ms.

• OSTI ID: 22356583
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 788, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
GAMMA SOURCES
LUMINOSITY
MAGNETIC FIELDS
NEBULAE
NEUTRONS
PULSARS
SPECTRA
SPIN
STARS
SUPERNOVA REMNANTS
SURFACES
TELESCOPES
TEV RANGE
X RADIATION