PSR J1856+0245: Arecibo Discovery of a Young, Energetic Pulsar Coincident with the TeV Gamma-ray Source HESS J1857+026

Abstract

We present the discovery of the Vela-like radio pulsar J1856+0245 in the Arecibo PALFA survey. PSR J1856+0245 has a spin period of 81ms, a characteristic age of 21kyr, and a spin-down luminosity Edot = 4.6 x 10^36 ergs/s. It is positionally coincident with the TeV gamma-ray source HESS J1857+026, which has no other known counterparts. Young, energetic pulsars create wind nebulae, and more than a dozen pulsar wind nebulae have been associated with very-high-energy (100GeV-100TeV) gamma-ray sources discovered with the HESS telescope. The gamma-ray emission seen from HESS J1857+026 is potentially produced by a pulsar wind nebula powered by PSR J1856+0245; faint X-ray emission detected by ASCA at the pulsar's position supports this hypothesis. The inferred gamma-ray efficiency is epsilon_gamma = L_gamma/Edot = 3.1% (1-10TeV, for a distance of 9kpc), comparable to that observed in similar associations.

13 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters

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• The soft gamma-ray pulsar population: an high-energy overview
• PSR J1838-0537: Discovery of a young, energetic gamma-ray pulsar
• The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT IV: Polarisation properties of young, energetic pulsars
• Fermi-LAT constraints on the Pulsar Wind Nebula nature of HESS J1857+026
• Studying the nature of the unidentified gamma-ray source HESS J1841-055 with the MAGIC telescopes
• Multi-wavelength study of the MGRO J2019+37
• Radio study of HESS J1857+026. Gamma-rays from a superbubble?