Large Binocular Telescope observations of PSR J2043+2740

Abstract

We present the results of deep optical imaging of the radio/$\gamma$-ray pulsar PSR J2043+2740, obtained with the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). With a characteristic age of 1.2 Myr, PSR J2043+2740 is one of the oldest (non recycled) pulsars detected in $\gamma$-rays, although with still a quite high rotational energy reservoir (${\dot{E}}_{\mathrm{rot}}=5.6\times 10^{34}$ erg s${}^{-1}$). The presumably close distance (a few hundred pc), suggested by the hydrogen column density ($N_{\mathrm{H}}\lesssim 3.6\times 10^{20}$ cm${}^{-2}$), would make it a viable target for deep optical observations, never attempted until now. We observed the pulsar with the Large Binocular Camera of the LBT. The only object (V=25.44$\pm$0.05) detected within ~3" from the pulsar radio coordinates is unrelated to it. PSR J2043+2740 is, thus, undetected down to V~26.6 (3-$\sigma$), the deepest limit on its optical emission. We discuss the implications of this result on the pulsar emission properties.

4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication on MNRAS

References in corpus (6)

• The ATNF Pulsar Catalogue
• A New Electron Density Model for Estimation of Pulsar and FRB Distances
• On Pulsar Distance Measurements and their Uncertainties
• The performance of the blue prime focus Large Binocular Camera at the Large Binocular Telescope
• Discovery of new gamma-ray pulsars with AGILE
• Observations of three young gamma-ray pulsars with the Gran Telescopio Canarias

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Thermal luminosities of cooling neutron stars