Observations of one young and three middle-aged γ\gamma-ray pulsarswith the Gran Telescopio Canarias

Mar 19, 2018
10 pages
Published in:
  • Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 478 (2018) 1, 332-341
  • Published: Jul 21, 2018
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Abstract: (Oxford University Press)
We used the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias to search for the optical counterparts to four isolated γ-ray pulsars, all detected in the X-rays by either XMM-Newton or Chandra but not yet in the optical. Three of them are middle-aged pulsars – PSR J1846+0919 (0.36 Myr), PSR J2055+2539 (1.2 Myr), PSR J2043+2740 (1.2 Myr) – and one, PSR J1907+0602, is a young pulsar (19.5 kyr). For both PSR J1907+0602 and PSR J2055+2539 we found one object close to the pulsar position. However, in both cases such an object cannot be a viable candidate counterpart to the pulsar. For PSR J1907+0602, because it would imply an anomalously red spectrum for the pulsar and for PSR J2055+2539 because the pulsar would be unrealistically bright (r′ = 20.34 ± 0.04) for the assumed distance and interstellar extinction. For PSR J1846+0919, we found no object sufficiently close to the expected position to claim a possible association, whereas for PSR J2043+2740 we confirm our previous findings that the object nearest to the pulsar position is an unrelated field star. We used our brightness limits (g′ ≈ 27), the first obtained with a large-aperture telescope for both PSR J1846+0919 and PSR J2055+2539, to constrain the optical emission properties of these pulsars and investigate the presence of spectral turnovers at low energies in their multiwavelength spectra.
Note:
  • 10 pages, 11 figures, accpted for publication in MNRAS
  • stars: neutron
  • pulsars: individual: PSR J1846+0919, PSR J2055+2539, PSR J2043+2740, PSR J1907+0602