Discovery of X-ray Pulsations from the INTEGRAL Source IGR J11014-6103

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a new 62.8 ms pulsar, PSR J1101-6101, associated with a supernova remnant, with detailed measurements of its properties and insights into its motion and emission characteristics.

Contribution

The paper presents the first detection of X-ray pulsations from IGR J11014-6103 and characterizes its physical and emission properties, revealing its unique features among INTEGRAL-detected pulsars.

Findings

PSR J1101-6101 has a spin period of 62.8 ms.

It exhibits high X-ray efficiency and jet power.

Its nebula structure suggests a bow shock with deviations.

Abstract

We report the discovery of PSR J1101-6101, a 62.8 ms pulsar in IGR J11014-6103, a hard X-ray source with a jet and a cometary tail that strongly suggests it is moving away from the center of the supernova remnant (SNR) MSH 11-61A at v>1000 km/s. Two XMM-Newton observations were obtained with the EPIC pn in small window mode, resulting in the measurement of its spin-down luminosity E_dot = 1.36e36 erg/s, characteristic age Tau_c = 116 kyr, and surface magnetic field strength B_s = 7.4e11 G. In comparison to Tau_c, the 10-30 kyr age estimated for MSH 11-61A suggests that the pulsar was born in the SNR with initial period in the range 54 < P_0 < 60 ms. PSR J1101-6101 is the least energetic of the 15 rotation-powered pulsars detected by INTEGRAL, and has a high efficiency of hard X-ray radiation and jet power. We examine the shape of the cometary nebula in a Chandra image, which is roughly consistent with a bow shock at the velocity inferred from the SNR age and the pulsar's E-dot. However, its structure differs in detail from the classic bow shock, and we explore possible reasons for this.