XMM-Newton Observation of the Nearby Pulsar B1133+16

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2017

Publication Title

Astrophysical Journal

Volume

835

Issue

2

Abstract

We constrain the X-ray properties of the nearby (360 pc), old (5 Myr) pulsar B1133+16 with ∼100 ks effective exposure time by XMM-Newton. The observed pulsar flux in the 0.23 keV energy range is ∼10-14 erg cm-2 s-1, which results in the recording of ∼ 600 source counts with the EPIC pn and MOS detectors. The X-ray radiation is dominated by nonthermal radiation and is well described by both a single power-law model (PL) and a sum of blackbody and power-law emission (BB+PL). The BB+PL model results in a spectral photon index γ = 2.4+0.3 0.4 and a nonthermal flux in the 0.2-3 keV energy range of (7 � 2) � 10-15 erg cm-2 s-1. The thermal emission is consistent with the blackbody emission from a small hot spot with a radius of Rpc ≈ 14+ 7 -5 m and a temperature of = Ts 2.9+ 0.6 0.4 MK. Assuming that the hot spot corresponds to the polar cap of the pulsar, we can use the magnetic flux conservation law to estimate the magnetic field at the surface Bs ≈ 3.9 � 1014 G . The observations are in good agreement with the predictions of the partially screened gap model, which assumes the existence of smallscale surface magnetic field structures in the polar cap region. � 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

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File Size

810 KB

Language

english

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