Towards an X-ray inventory of nearby neutron stars

Abstract

The X-ray emission of neutron stars enables a probe of their temperatures, geometries, and magnetospheric properties. The current number of X-ray emitting pulsars is insufficient to rule out observational biases that may arise from poorly known distance, age, or location of the neutron stars. One approach to overcome such biases is to create a distance-limited sample with sufficiently deep observations. With the aim of better sampling of the nearby ($\lesssim$ 2kpc) neutron stars population, we started an XMM-Newton survey of pulsars to measure their X-ray fluxes or derive respective constraining upper limits. We investigated 14 nearby pulsars for potential X-ray counterparts using different energy bands and detectors. In addition to our new XMM-Newton data, we also considered archival data and catalogs. We discuss source properties and also check for alternative counterparts to the X-ray sources. In our new XMM-Newton data, we found two pulsar counterpart candidates with significance above over $4\sigma$ and one candidate with $3.5\sigma$ by combining EPIC camera detection likelihoods. We also report the detection of potential X-ray counterparts to 8 radio pulsars in the 4XMM-DR10 catalog which have not been reported in the literature.

10 pages, 3 figures, 7 tables, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics

References in corpus (12)

• Array Programming with NumPy
• A New Electron Density Model for Estimation of Pulsar and FRB Distances
• Gaia Early Data Release 3: Photometric content and validation
• Stellar SEDs from 0.3-2.5 Microns: Tracing the Stellar Locus and Searching for Color Outliers in SDSS and 2MASS
• The XMM-Newton serendipitous survey IX. The fourth XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue
• The Magnificent Seven: Magnetic fields and surface temperature distributions
• Optical spectroscopy and demographics of redback millisecond pulsar binaries
• Non-Thermal X-ray Properties of Rotation Powered Pulsars and Their Wind Nebulae
• Quasar and galaxy classification in Gaia Data Release 2
• A Chandra Look at the X-ray Faint Millisecond Pulsars in the Globular Cluster NGC 6752
• The Pulsar Search Collaboratory: Discovery and Timing of Five New Pulsars
• Efficiency of Synchrotron Radiation from Rotation-Powered Pulsars

Cited by in corpus (6)

• An emission state switching radio transient with a 54 minute period
• The Thousand-Pulsar-Array program on MeerKAT -- IX. The time-averaged properties of the observed pulsar population
• XMM-Newton and SRG/eROSITA observations of the isolated neutron star candidate 4XMM J022141.5-735632
• A Catalog of Pulsar X-ray Filaments
• Seeking the nearest neutron stars using a new local electron density map
• Confronting the dark matter capture rate with a continuous gravitational wave probe of local neutron stars