Observations of one young and three middle-aged $\gamma$-ray pulsars with the Gran Telescopio Canarias

Abstract

We used the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias to search for the optical counterparts to four isolated $\gamma$-ray pulsars, all detected in the X-rays by either \xmm\ or \chan\ but not yet in the optical. Three of them are middle-aged pulsars -- PSR\, J1846+0919 (0.36 Myr), PSR\, J2055+2539 (1.2 Myr), PSR\, J2043+2740 (1.2 Myr) -- and one, PSR\, J1907+0602, is a young pulsar (19.5 kyr). For both PSR\, J1907+0602 and PSR\, J2055+2539 we found one object close to the pulsar position. However, in both cases such an object cannot be a viable candidate counterpart to the pulsar. For PSR\, J1907+0602, because it would imply an anomalously red spectrum for the pulsar and for PSR\, J2055+2539 because the pulsar would be unrealistically bright ($r^{\prime }=20.34\pm 0.04$) for the assumed distance and interstellar extinction. For PSR\, J1846+0919, we found no object sufficiently close to the expected position to claim a possible association, whereas for PSR\, J2043+2740 we confirm our previous findings that the object nearest to the pulsar position is an unrelated field star. We used our brightness limits ($g^{\prime }\approx 27$), the first obtained with a large-aperture telescope for both PSR\, J1846+0919 and PSR\, J2055+2539, to constrain the optical emission properties of these pulsars and investigate the presence of spectral turnovers at low energies in their multi-wavelength spectra.

10 pages, 11 figures, accpted for publication in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• PSR B0656+14: the unified outlook from the infrared to X-rays
• Multiwavelength observations of PSR J2021+4026 across a mode change reveal a phase shift in its X-ray emission
• The two tails of PSR J2055+2539 as seen by Chandra: analysis of the nebular morphology and pulsar proper motion
• Search for periodic emission of five gamma-ray pulsars at the frequency of 111 MHz