The nebula around pulsar B1853+01 in X-rays

¹ Departament de Física Quàntica i Astrofísica, Institut de Ciències del Cosmos, Universitat de Barcelona, IEEC-UB, Martí i Franquès 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada
³ ICREA, Pg Lluís Companys 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain

^★ Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 16 July 2025
Accepted: 5 February 2026

Abstract

We report on the results of a comprehensive analysis of X-ray observations with Chandra, XMM-Newton and NuSTAR of the pulsar wind nebula (PWN) associated with PSR B1853+01, located inside the W44 supernova remnant (SNR). Previous X-ray observations unveiled the presence of a fast-moving pulsar, PSR B1853+01, at the southern edge of the W44 thermal X-ray emission region, as well as an elongated tail structure trailing the pulsar. Our analysis reveals, in addition, an “outflow” feature ahead of the pulsar extending for about 1′ (∼1.0 pc at a distance of 3.2 kpc). On larger scales, the entire PWN seems to be surrounded by a faint, diffuse X-ray emission structure. The southern part of this structure displays the same unusual morphology as the outflow feature and extends along ∼6′ (∼5 pc) in the direction of the pulsar proper motion. In this work, a spatially resolved spectral analysis for different extended regions around PSR B1853+01 was carried out. For an updated value of the column density of 0.65_−0.42^+0.46 × 10²² cm⁻², a power-law fit to the outflow region yields a spectral index of Γ ≈ 1.24_−0.24^+0.23, which is significantly harder than that of the pulsar (Γ ≈ 1.87_−0.43^+0.48) and the pulsar tail (Γ ≈ 2.01_−0.38^+0.39). We argue that both the outflow structure and the surrounding halo-like X-ray emission might be produced by high-energy particles escaping the PWN around PSR B1853+01, a scenario recently also suggested for other bow-shock PWNe with jet-like structures and/or TeV halos.