Geminga’s pulsar halo: An X-ray view

¹ Laboratoire d’Annecy-le-Vieux de Physique Théorique (LAPTh), CNRS, USMB, F-74940 Annecy, France
² Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, 550 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA
⁴ Space Research Institute (IKI), 84/32 Profsouznaya Str., Moscow 117997, Russian Federation
⁵ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Via P. Giuria, 1, 10125 Torino, Italy
⁶ Department of Physics, University of Torino, Via P. Giuria, 1, 10125 Torino, Italy

Received: 4 April 2024
Accepted: 29 June 2024

Abstract

Geminga is the first pulsar around which a remarkable gamma-ray halo extending over a few degrees was discovered at TeV energies by MILAGRO and HAWC and later by H.E.S.S., and by Fermi-LAT in the GeV band. More middle-aged pulsars have exhibited gamma-ray halos, and they are now recognised as an emerging class of Galactic gamma-ray sources. The emission appears in the late evolution stage of pulsars, and is most plausibly explained by inverse Compton scattering of CMB and interstellar photons by relativistic electrons and positrons escaping from the pulsar wind nebulae. These observations pose a number of theoretical challenges, particularly the origin of the inferred, significantly lower effective diffusion coefficients around the pulsar when compared to typical Galactic values. Tackling these questions requires constraining the ambient magnetic field properties, which can be achieved through X-ray observations. If the gamma-ray halos originate from a distribution of highly energetic electrons, synchrotron losses in the ambient magnetic fields of the same particles are expected to produce a diffuse X-ray emission with a similar spatial extension. We present the most comprehensive X-ray study of the Geminga pulsar halo to date, utilising archival data from XMM-Newton and NuSTAR. Our X-ray analysis covers a broad bandwidth (0.5 − 79 keV) and large field of view (θ ∼ 4°) for the first time. This was achieved by accurately measuring the background over the entire field of view, and taking into account both focused and stray-light X-ray photons from the pulsar halo with NuSTAR. We find no significant emission and set robust constraints on the X-ray halo flux. These are translated to stringent constraints on the ambient magnetic field strength and the diffusion coefficient by using a physical model considering particle injection, diffusion, and cooling over the pulsar’s lifetime, which is tuned by fitting multi-wavelength data. Our novel methodology for modelling and searching for synchrotron X-ray halos can be applied to other pulsar halo candidates.