Discovery of gamma and X-ray pulsations from the young and energetic PSR J1357-6429 with Fermi and XMM-Newton

Abstract

Since the launch of the Fermi satellite, the number of known gamma-ray pulsars has increased tenfold. Most gamma-ray detected pulsars are young and energetic, and many are associated with TeV sources. PSR J1357-6429 is a high spin-down power pulsar (Edot = 3.1 * 10^36 erg/s), discovered during the Parkes multibeam survey of the Galactic plane, with significant timing noise typical of very young pulsars. In the very-high-energy domain, H.E.S.S. has reported the detection of the extended source HESS J1356-645 (intrinsic Gaussian width of 12') whose centroid lies 7' from PSR J1357-6429. Using a rotational ephemeris obtained with 74 observations made with the Parkes telescope at 1.4 GHz, we phase-fold more than two years of gamma-ray data acquired by Fermi-LAT as well as those collected with XMM-Newton, and perform gamma-ray spectral modeling. Significant gamma and X-ray pulsations are detected from PSR J1357-6429. The light curve in both bands shows one broad peak. Gamma-ray spectral analysis of the pulsed emission suggests that it is well described by a simple power-law of index 1.5 +/- 0.3stat +/- 0.3syst with an exponential cut-off at 0.8 +/- 0.3stat +/- 0.3syst GeV and an integral photon flux above 100 MeV of (6.5 +/- 1.6stat +/- 2.3syst) * 10^-8 cm^-2 s^-1. The X-ray spectra obtained from the new data provide results consistent with those reported by Zavlin (2007). Upper limits on the gamma-ray emission from its potential pulsar wind nebula (PWN) are also reported. Assuming a distance of 2.4 kpc, the Fermi LAT energy flux yields a gamma-ray luminosity for PSR J1357-6429 of L_gamma = (2.13 +/- 0.25stat +/- 0.83syst) * 10^34 erg/s, consistent with an L_gamma \propto sqrt(Edot) relationship. The Fermi non-detection of the pulsar wind nebula associated with HESS J1356-645 provides new constraints on the electron population responsible for the extended TeV emission.

Accepted for publication by A&A; 7 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (17)

• Fermi Large Area Telescope Second Source Catalog
• The Second Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-ray Pulsars
• 2FHL: The Second Catalog of Hard Fermi-LAT Sources
• Constraints on the Galactic Population of TEV Pulsar Wind Nebulae Using Fermi Large Area Telescope Observations
• The gas-to-extinction ratio and the gas distribution in the Galaxy
• Pulsar-wind nebulae and magnetar outflows: observations at radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray wavelengths
• Constraints on viewing geometries from radio observations of $\gamma$-ray-loud pulsars using a novel method
• Discovery of the source HESS J1356-645 associated with the young and energetic PSR J1357-6429
• The Young Pulsar J1357-6429 and Its Pulsar Wind Nebula
• Spectral characterization of the non-thermal X-ray emission of gamma-ray pulsars
• Possible optical counterpart of PSR J1357-6429
• The Distance Measurements of Supernova Remnants in The Fourth Galactic Quadrant
• VLT observations of the two Fermi pulsars PSR J1357-6429 and PSR J1048-5832
• GeV gamma-ray emission from pulsar wind nebula HESS J1356-645 with Fermi-LAT
• Modeling the non-recycled Fermi gamma-ray pulsar population
• Near-infrared observations of PSR J1357-6429
• Observations of PSR J1357-6429 at 2.1 GHz with the Australia Telescope Compact Array