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X-ray Studies of the Pulsar Wind Nebula Around PSR B0540-69

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2016

R. Petre
Affiliation:
Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
U. Hwang
Affiliation:
Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
S. S. Holt
Affiliation:
F. W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, MA 02492, USA
R. M. Williams
Affiliation:
Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA

Abstract

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The pulsar wind nebula (PWN) surrounding the 50-ms pulsar B0540-69 in the Large Magellanic Cloud shares many properties with the Crab Nebula, the canonical Galactic PWN. We have used the ACIS instrument on the Chandra X-ray Observatory to perform spatially resolved spectroscopy of the PWN. The spectrum of the inner 10″ is characterized by a simple power law, with a spectral index that steepens strongly with radius. Outside the central 10″ the spectra also require a thermal component. This diameter corresponds to a shell detected in [OIII], suggesting that this shell represents a skin around the PWN, in analogy to the Crab. We infer the value of several key PWN parameters, including σ, the average ratio of electromagnetic to particle flux.

Type
Part 4: Pulsar Wind Nebulae and Their Environments
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2004 

References

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