Probing the Pulsar Wind in the gamma-ray Binary System PSR B1259-63/SS 2883

Abstract

The spectral energy distribution from the X-ray to the very high energy regime ($>100$ GeV) has been investigated for the $\gamma$-ray binary system PSR B1259-63/SS2883 as a function of orbital phase within the framework of a simple model of a pulsar wind nebula. The emission model is based on the synchrotron radiation process for the X-ray regime and the inverse Compton scattering process boosting stellar photons from the Be star companion to the very high energy (100GeV-TeV) regime. With this model, the observed temporal behavior can, in principle, be used to probe the pulsar wind properties at the shock as a function of the orbital phase. Due to theoretical uncertainties in the detailed microphysics of the acceleration process and the conversion of magnetic energy into particle kinetic energy, the observed X-ray data for the entire orbit are fit using two different methods.

46 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (3)

• Hadronic model for radio-to-TeV gamma-ray emission from PSR B1259-63
• gamma-ray emission from LS I +61 303: The impact of basic system uncertainties
• Filamentation Instability of Interacting Current Sheets in Striped Relativistic Winds: The Origin of Low Sigma?