Discovery of X-ray emission from the young radio pulsar PSR J1357–6429

Free access article

Issue		A&A Volume 467, Number 2, May IV 2007


Page(s)		L45 - L48
Section		Letters
DOI		http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20077480

A&A 467, L45-L48 (2007)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20077480

Letter

Discovery of X-ray emission from the young radio pulsar PSR J1357-6429

P. Esposito^{1, 2}, A. Tiengo², A. De Luca², and F. Mattana^{2, 3}

¹ Università degli Studi di Pavia, Dipartimento di Fisica Nucleare e Teorica and INFN-Pavia, via Bassi 6, 27100 Pavia, Italy
e-mail: paoloesp@iasf-milano.inaf.it
² INAF - Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica Milano, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy
³ Università degli Studi di Milano - Bicocca, Dipartimento di Fisica G. Occhialini, p.za della Scienza 3, 20126 Milano, Italy

(Received 14 March 2007 / Accepted 10 April 2007)

Abstract
We present the first X-ray detection of the very young pulsar PSR J1357-6429 (characteristic age of 7.3 kyr) using data from the XMM-Newton and Chandra satellites. We find that the spectrum is well described by a power-law plus blackbody model, with photon index $\Gamma=1.4$ and blackbody temperature $k_{\rm B}T=160$ eV. For the estimated distance of 2.5 kpc, this corresponds to a 2-10 keV luminosity of ~1.2 $\times$ 10³² erg s^-1, thus the fraction of the spin-down energy channeled by PSR J1357-6429 into X-ray emission is one of the lowest observed. The Chandra data confirm the positional coincidence with the radio pulsar and allow to set an upper limit of 3 $\times$ 10³¹ erg s^-1 on the 2-10 keV luminosity of a compact pulsar wind nebula. We do not detect any pulsed emission from the source and determine an upper limit of 30% for the modulation amplitude of the X-ray emission at the radio frequency of the pulsar.

Key words: stars: individual: PSR J1357-6429 -- stars: neutron -- X-rays: stars

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