INTEGRAL detection of the pulsar wind nebula in PSR J1846-0258

TL;DR

This paper reports the detection of soft gamma-ray emission from PSR J1846-0258, attributing it mainly to the pulsar wind nebula, and discusses its high magnetic field and emission efficiency.

Contribution

It combines INTEGRAL gamma-ray data with Chandra X-ray observations to identify the gamma-ray emission source in PSR J1846-0258 for the first time.

Findings

Gamma-ray emission includes both pulsar and nebula, but dominated by the nebula.

The pulsar has a high magnetic field strength.

The system shows a high fraction of spin-down energy converted into gamma-rays.

Abstract

We communicate the detection of soft (20--200 keV) gamma-rays from the pulsar and pulsar wind nebula of PSR J1846-0258 and aim to identify the component of the system which is responsible for the gamma-ray emission. To pinpoint the source of gamma-ray emission we combine spectral information from the INTEGRAL gamma-ray mission with archival data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Our analysis shows that the soft gamma-rays detected from PSR J1846-0258 include emission from both the pulsar and the pulsar wind nebula, but the measured spectral shape is dominated by the pulsar wind nebula. We further discuss PSR J1846-0258 in the context of rotation-powered pulsars with high magnetic field strengths and review the anomalously high fraction of spin-down luminosity converted into X- and gamma-ray emission in light of a possible overestimate of the distance to this pulsar.