The Magnetar Nature and the Outburst Mechanism of a Transient Anomalous X-ray Pulsar

Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs) belong to a class of neutron stars believed to harbor the strongest magnetic fields in the universe, as indicated by their energetic bursts and their rapid spindowns. However, an unambiguous measurement of their surface field strengths has not been made to date. It is also not known whether AXP outbursts result from changes in the neutron star magnetic field or crust properties. Here we report a spectroscopic measurement of the surface magnetic field strength of an AXP, XTE J1810$-$197, and solidify its magnetar nature. The field strength obtained from detailed spectral analysis and modeling, B = (2.72$\pm$0.03)$\times10^{14}$ G, is remarkably close to the value inferred from the rate of spindown of this source and remains nearly constant during numerous observations spanning over an order of magnitude in source flux. The surface temperature, on the other hand, declines steadily and dramatically following the 2003 outburst of this source. Our findings demonstrate that heating occurs in the upper neutron star crust during an outburst and sheds light on the transient behaviour of AXPs.Comment: Accepted by ApJ Letters with minor change

Detection of Giant Radio Pulses from the Pulsar PSR B0656+14

Giant pulses (GPs) have been detected from the pulsar PSR B0656+14. A pulse that is more intense than the average pulse by a factor of 120 is encountered approximately once in 3000 observed periods of the pulsar. The peak flux density of the strongest pulse, 120 Jy, is a factor of 630 higher than that of the average pulse. The GP energy exceeds the energy of the average pulse by up to a factor of 110, which is comparable to that for other known pulsars with GPs, including the Crab pulsar and the millisecond pulsar PSR B1937+21. The giant pulses are a factor of 6 narrower than the average pulse and are clustered at the head of the average pulse. PSR B0656+14 along with PSR B0031-07, PSR B1112+50, and PSR J1752+2359 belong to a group of pulsars that differ from previously known ones in which GPs have been detected without any extremely strong magnetic field on the light cylinder.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; originally published in Russian in Pis'ma Astron. Zh., 2006, v.32, 650; translated by George Rudnitskii; the English version will be appear in Astronomy Letter

Adapting standard maintenance approaches for mining excavators to actual operating condition

Significant portion of the annual calendar fund-time work of mining excavators spent on maintaining its working condition by carrying out preventive and repair regulatory activities and recovery in the event of emergency failures and maintenance and repair expenses constitute a significant proportion of the cost of excavation of mining rock. To assess the effectiveness of machinery a non-standard indicator, the coefficient of technical readiness, applied which does not have a single assessment methodology. At the present stage of machinery development, existing quarry dispatching systems allow you to allocate any of its elements from the fund-time of mining excavators: productive time, time spent in repair and maintenance and also classify other time costs of a particular machine which allowed an appropriate analysis. Analysis showed that at the current organization of MaR (maintenance and repair) there is significant potential to reduce repair impacts, as well as to ensure a reduction in the cost of routine maintenance, to remove maintenance and repair measures from the category of costly ones, at least for self-sufficiency without compromising the quality of these works and the reliability of the excavator as a whole. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd

Atacama compact array observations of the pulsar-wind nebula of SNR 0540-69.3

We present observations of the pulsar-wind nebula (PWN) region of SNR 0540-69.3. The observations were made with the Atacama Compact Array (ACA) in Bands 4 and 6. We also add radio observations from the Australia Compact Array at 3 cm. For 1.449–233.50 GHz, we obtain a synchrotron spectrum Fν∝ν−αν⁠, with the spectral index αν = 0.17 ± 0.02. To conclude how this joins the synchrotron spectrum at higher frequencies, we include hitherto unpublished AKARI mid-infrared data, and evaluate published data in the ultraviolet (UV), optical, and infrared (IR). In particular, some broad-band filter data in the optical must be discarded from our analysis due to contamination by spectral line emission. For the UV/IR part of the synchrotron spectrum, we arrive at αν=0.87+0.08−0.10⁠. There is room for 2.5 × 10−3 M⊙ of dust with a temperature of ∼55 K if there are dual breaks in the synchrotron spectrum, one around ∼9 × 1010 Hz and another at ∼2 × 1013 Hz. The spectral index then changes at ∼9 × 1010 Hz from αν = 0.14 ± 0.07 in the radio to αν=0.35−0.07+0.05 in the millimetre-to-far-IR range. The ACA Band 6 data marginally resolve the PWN. In particular, the strong emission ∼1.′′5 south-west of the pulsar, seen at other wavelengths, and resolved in the 3 cm data with its 0.″8 spatial resolution, is also strong in the millimetre range. The ACA data clearly reveal the supernova remnant shell ∼20–35 arcsec west of the pulsar, and for the shell we derive αν = 0.64 ± 0.05 for the range 8.6–145 GHz

Constraints on Thermal Emission Models of Anomalous X-ray Pulsars

Thermal emission from the surface of an ultramagnetic neutron star is believed to contribute significantly to the soft X-ray flux of the Anomalous X-ray Pulsars. We compare the detailed predictions of models of the surface emission from a magnetar to the observed properties of AXPs. In particular, we focus on the combination of their luminosities and energy-dependent pulsed fractions. We use the results of recent calculations for strongly magnetized atmospheres to obtain the angle- and energy-dependence of the surface emission. We include in our calculations the effects of general relativistic photon transport and interstellar extinction. We find that the combination of the large pulsed fractions and the high luminosities of AXPs cannot be accounted for by surface emission from a magnetar with two antipodal hot regions or a temperature distribution characteristic of a magnetic dipole. This result is robust for reasonable neutron star radii, for the range of magnetic field strengths inferred from the observed spin down rates, and for surface temperatures consistent with the spectral properties of AXPs. Models with a single hot emitting region can reproduce the observations, provided that the distance to one of the sources is ~30% less than the current best estimate, and allowing for systematic uncertainties in the spectral fit of a second source. Finally, the thermal emission models with antipodal emission geometry predict a characteristic strong increase of the pulsed fraction with photon energy, which is apparently inconsistent with the current data. The energy-dependence of the pulsed fraction in the models with one hot region shows a wider range of behavior and can be consistent with the existing data. Upcoming high-resolution observations with Chandra and XMM-Newton will provide a conclusive test.Comment: 25 preprint pages, 7 color figures, ApJ, in pres

Hydrogen atom moving across a strong magnetic field: analytical approximations

Analytical approximations are constructed for binding energies, quantum-mechanical sizes and oscillator strengths of main radiative transitions of hydrogen atoms arbitrarily moving in magnetic fields 10^{12}-10^{13} G. Examples of using the obtained approximations for determination of maximum transverse velocity of an atom and for evaluation of absorption spectra in magnetic neutron star atmospheres are presented.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, 5 tables, LaTeX with IOP style files (included). In v.2, Fig.1 and Table 5 have been corrected. In v.3, a misprint in the fit for oscillator strengths, Eq.(21), has been correcte

Surface Emission Properties of Strongly Magnetic Neutron Stars

We construct radiative equilibrium models for strongly magnetized (B > 10^13 G) neutron-star atmospheres taking into account magnetic free-free absorption and scattering processes computed for two polarization modes. We include the effects of vacuum polarization in our calculations. We present temperature profiles and the angle-, photon energy-, and polarization-dependent emerging intensity for a range of magnetic field strengths and effective temperatures of the atmospheres. We find that for B < 10^14 G, the emerging spectra are bluer than the blackbody corresponding to the effective temperature, T_eff, with modified Planckian shapes due to the photon-energy dependence of the magnetic opacities. However, vacuum polarization significantly modifies the spectra for B~10^15 G, giving rise to power-law tails at high photon energies. The angle-dependence (beaming) of the emerging intensity has two maxima: a narrow (pencil) peak at small angles (<5 degrees) with respect to the normal and a broad maximum (fan beam) at intermediate angles (~20-60 degrees). The relative importance and the opening angle of the radial beam decreases strongly with increasing magnetic field strength and decreasing photon energy. We finally compute a T_eff-T_c relation for our models, where T_c is the local color temperature of the spectrum emerging from the neutron star surface, and find that T_c/T_eff ranges between 1.1-1.8. We discuss the implications of our results for various thermally emitting neutron star models.Comment: 30 pages, 10 color figures, ApJ in pres

Spectral evolution and polarization of variable structures in the pulsar wind nebula of PSR B0540-69.3

We present high spatial resolution optical imaging and polarization observations of the PSR B0540-69.3 and its highly dynamical pulsar wind nebula (PWN) performed with HST, and compare them with X-ray data obtained with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. We have studied the bright region southwest of the pulsar where a bright "blob" is seen in 1999. We show that it may be a result of local energy deposition around 1999, and that the emission from this then faded away. Polarization data from 2007 show that the polarization properties show dramatic spatial variations at the 1999 blob position arguing for a local process. Several other positions along the pulsar-"blob" orientation show similar changes in polarization, indicating previous recent local energy depositions. In X-rays, the spectrum steepens away from the "blob" position, faster orthogonal to the pulsar-"blob" direction than along this axis of orientation. This could indicate that the pulsar-"blob" orientation is an axis along where energy in the PWN is mainly injected, and that this is then mediated to the filaments in the PWN by shocks. We highlight this by constructing an [S II]-to-[O III]-ratio map. We argue, through modeling, that the high [S II]/[O III] ratio is not due to time-dependent photoionization caused by possible rapid Xray emission variations in the "blob" region. We have also created a multiwavelength energy spectrum for the "blob" position showing that one can, to within 2sigma, connect the optical and X-ray emission by a single power law. We obtain best power-law fits for the X-ray spectrum if we include "extra" oxygen, in addition to the oxygen column density in the interstellar gas of the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Milky Way. This oxygen is most naturally explained by the oxygen-rich ejecta of the supernova remnant. The oxygen needed likely places the progenitor mass in the 20 - 25 Msun range.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS on December 6th 2010, 18 pages, 15 figures. The article with full resolution figures is available here ftp://ftp.astro.su.se/pub/peter/papers/pwn0540_2010_corrected.pd

Deep BVR Imaging of the Field of the Millisecond Pulsar PSR J0030+0451 with the VLT

We report on deep BVR-imaging of the field of the nearby millisecond pulsar PSR J0030+0451 obtained with the ESO/VLT/FORS2. We do not detect any optical counterpart down to B>27.3, V>27.0 and R>27.0 in the immediate vicinity of the radio pulsar position. The closest detected sources are offset by >3'', and they are excluded as counterpart candidates by our astrometry. Using our upper limits in the optical, and including recent XMM-Newton X-ray data we show that any nonthermal power-law spectral component of neutron star magnetospheric origin, as suggested by the interpretation of X-ray data, must be suppressed by at least a factor of ~500 in the optical range. This either rules out the nonthermal interpretation or suggests a dramatic spectral break in the 0.003-0.1 keV range of the power-law spectrum. Such a situation has never been observed in the optical/X-ray spectral region of ordinary pulsars, and the origin of such a break is unclear. An alternative interpretation with a purely thermal X-ray spectrum is consistent with our optical upper limits. In this case the X-ray emission is dominated by hot polar caps of the pulsar.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX aa.cls style, 5 EPS figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic