Serendipitous Discovery of An Infrared Bow Shock Near PSR J1549-4848 with Spitzer

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of an infrared bow shock nebula near pulsar PSR J1549-4848 using Spitzer, analyzing its properties and discussing possible origins, including a collimated pulsar wind.

Contribution

First detection of an infrared bow shock nebula around PSR J1549-4848 with detailed spectral analysis and discussion of its potential origin from pulsar wind.

Findings

Nebula has a bow-shock shape with PAH and H2 emission features.

No field stars can be the nebula's driving object due to brightness constraints.

A highly collimated pulsar wind is proposed as the likely cause.

Abstract

We report on the discovery of an infrared cometary nebula around PSR J1549$-$4848 in our Spitzer survey of a few middle-aged radio pulsars. Following the discovery, multi-wavelength imaging and spectroscopic observations of the nebula were carried out. We detected the nebula in Spitzer IRAC 8.0, MIPS 24 and 70 $\mu$m imaging and in Spitzer IRS 7.5--14.4 $\mu$m spectroscopic observations, and also in the WISE all-sky survey at 12 and 22 $\mu$m.These data were analyzed in detail, and we find that the nebula can be described with a standard bow-shock shape, and that its spectrum contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon and H$_2$ emission features. However, it is not certain which object drives the nebula. We analyze the field stars and conclude that none of them can be the associated object because stars with a strong wind or mass ejection that usually produce bow shocks are much brighter than the field stars. The pulsar is approximately 15\arcsec\ away from the region in which the associated object is expected to be located. In order to resolve the discrepancy, we suggest that a highly collimated wind could be emitted from the pulsar and produce the bow shock. X-ray imaging to detect the interaction of the wind with the ambient medium and high-spatial resolution radio imaging to determine the proper motion of the pulsar should be carried out, which will help verify the association of the pulsar with the bow shock nebula.