X-ray Observations of High-B Radio Pulsars

TL;DR

This paper presents X-ray observations of high-magnetic-field radio pulsars, revealing their thermal properties and differences from X-ray-isolated neutron stars, and explores how magnetic fields influence pulsar evolution.

Contribution

It provides new X-ray measurements of three high-magnetic-field pulsars, highlighting the impact of magnetic fields on their thermal emission and evolutionary paths.

Findings

PSR J1734-3333 is hotter than similar age pulsars.

No X-ray pulsations detected from PSR J1734-3333.

PSRs B1845-19 and J1001-5939 are cooler than most XINSs.

Abstract

The study of high-magnetic-field pulsars is important for examining the relationships between radio pulsars, magnetars, and X-ray-isolated neutron stars (XINSs). Here we report on X-ray observations of three such high-magnetic-field radio pulsars. We first present the results of a deep XMM-Newton observation of PSR J1734-3333, taken to follow up on its initial detection in 2009. The pulsar's spectrum is well fit by a blackbody with a temperature of 300 +/- 60 eV, with bolometric luminosity L_bb = 2.0(+2.2 -0.7)e+32 erg/s = 0.0036E_dot for a distance of 6.1 kpc. We detect no X-ray pulsations from the source, setting a 1 sigma upper limit on the pulsed fraction of 60% in the 0.5-3 keV band. We compare PSR J1734-3333 to other rotation-powered pulsars of similar age and find that it is significantly hotter, supporting the hypothesis that the magnetic field affects the observed thermal properties of pulsars. We also report on XMM-Newton and Chandra observations of PSRs B1845-19 and J1001-5939. We do not detect either pulsar, setting 3 sigma upper limits on their blackbody temperatures of 48 and 56 eV, respectively. Despite the similarities in rotational properties, these sources are significantly cooler than all but one of the XINSs, which we attribute to the two groups having been born with different magnetic fields and hence evolving differently.