Investigating CXOU J163802.6-471358: a new pulsar wind nebula in the Norma region?

Abstract

We present the first analysis of the extended source CXOU J163802.6--471358, which was discovered serendipitously during the {\em Chandra} X-ray survey of the Norma region of the Galactic spiral arms. The X-ray source exhibits a cometary appearance with a point source and an extended tail region. The complete source spectrum is fitted well with an absorbed power law model and jointly fitting the {\em Chandra} spectrum of the full source with one obtained from an archived {\em XMM-Newton} observation results in best fit parameters $N_{\mathrm{H}}$ $=1.5_{-0.5}^{+0.7}\times 10^{23}\text{cm}{}^{-2}$ and $\Gamma =1.1_{-0.6}^{+0.7}$ (90 confidence uncertainties). The unabsorbed luminosity of the full source is then $L_X\sim 4.8\times 10^{33}{d}_{10}^2$ergs s${}^{-1}$ with $d_{10}=d/10$kpc, where a distance of 10 kpc is a lower bound inferred from the large column density. The radio counterpart found for the source using data from the Molonglo Galactic Plane Survey epoch-2 (MGPS-2) shows an elongated tail offset from the X-ray emission. No infrared counterpart was found. The results are consistent with the source being a previously unknown pulsar driving a bow shock through the ambient medium.

References in corpus (4)

• The Molonglo Galactic Plane Survey (MGPS-2): Compact Source Catalogue
• Pulsar Wind Nebulae in the Chandra Era
• The XMM-Newton wide-field survey in the COSMOS field. IV: X-ray spectral properties of Active Galactic Nuclei
• X-ray Observations of Parsec-Scale Tails behind Two Middle-Aged Pulsars

Cited by in corpus (6)

• On the origin of jet-like features in bow shock pulsar wind nebulae
• Full-3D relativistic MHD simulations of Bow Shock Pulsar Wind Nebulae: dynamics
• Modeling the γ-ray Pulsar Wind Nebulae population in our Galaxy
• The Norma Arm Region Chandra Survey: X-ray Populations in the Spiral Arms
• Fast as Potoroo: Radio Continuum Detection of a Bow-Shock Pulsar Wind Nebula Powered by Pulsar J1638-4713
• 3D Relativistic MHD Simulations of Pulsar Bow Shock Nebulae