2005/05/16 by M. E. Gonzalez, V. M. Kaspi, F. Camilo +2 · 64 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Black-body radiation #Dipole #Magnetic dipole #Magnetic field #Millisecond pulsar #Neutron star #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #RADIUS #X-ray pulsar #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/432032
published in The Astrophysical Journal 630(1), 489-494 (IOP Publishing) · 7 pages and 2 figures. Accepted by ApJ
arxiv created 2005/05/16 · openalex publication_date 2005/09/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We present XMM-Newton observations of the radio pulsar PSR J1119-6127, which has an inferred age of 1700 yr and surface dipole magnetic field strength of 4.1 × 10 13 G. We report the first detection of pulsed X-ray emission from PSR J1119-6127. In the 0.5-2.0 keV range, the pulse profile shows a narrow peak with a very high pulsed fraction of 74% ± 14%. In the 2.0-10.0 keV range, the upper limit for the pulsed fraction is 28% (99% confidence). The pulsed emission is well described by a thermal blackbody model with a temperature of T ∞ = 2.4 × 10 6 K and emitting radius of 3.4 km (at a distance of 8.4 kpc). Atmospheric models result in problematic estimates for the distance/emitting area. PSR J1119-6127 is now the radio pulsar with smallest characteristic age from which thermal X-ray emission has been detected. The combined temporal and spectral characteristics of this emission are unlike those of other radio pulsars detected at X-ray energies and challenge current models of thermal emission from neutron stars.