Precise timing and phase-resolved spectroscopy of the young pulsar J1617-5055 with NuSTAR

Abstract

We report on a NuSTAR observation of the young, energetic pulsar PSR J1617-5055. Parkes Observatory 3 GHz radio observations of the pulsar (taken about 7 years before the NuSTAR observations) are also reported here. NuSTAR detected pulsations at a frequency of $f\approx 14.4$ Hz ($P\approx 69.44$ ms) and, in addition, the observation was long enough to measure the source's frequency derivative, $\dot{f}\approx -2.8\times 10^{-11}$ Hz s${}^{-1}$. We find that the pulsar shows one peak per period at both hard X-ray and radio wavelengths, but that the hard X-ray pulse is broader (having a duty cycle of $\sim 0.7$), than the radio pulse (having a duty cycle of $\sim 0.08$). Additionally, the radio pulse is strongly linearly polarized. J1617's phase-integrated hard X-ray spectrum is well fit by an absorbed power-law model, with a photon index $\Gamma =1.59\pm 0.02$. The hard X-ray pulsations are well described by three Fourier harmonics, and have a pulsed fraction that increases with energy. We also fit the phase-resolved NuSTAR spectra with an absorbed power-law model in five phase bins and find that the photon index varies with phase from $\Gamma =1.52\pm 0.03$ at phases around the flux maximum to $\Gamma =1.79\pm 0.06$ around the flux minimum. Lastly, we compare our results with other pulsars whose magnetospheric emission is detected at hard X-ray energies and find that, similar to previous studies, J1617's hard X-ray properties are more similar to the MeV pulsars than the GeV pulsars.

Accepted for publication in ApJ

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