Discovery and characterization of superefficiency in pulsar wind nebulae

TL;DR

This paper numerically investigates the reverberation phase of pulsar wind nebulae, revealing that they can temporarily exceed their spin-down power in various electromagnetic bands, including X-ray and TeV energies.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed numerical analysis of the reverberation phase, identifying and characterizing periods of superefficiency across multiple wavelengths in pulsar wind nebulae.

Findings

Crab nebula will have a future period of X-ray superefficiency.

All studied nebulae exhibit radio, X-ray, and GeV superefficiency.

Most nebulae will also experience TeV superefficiency.

Abstract

We numerically study the radiative properties of the reverberation phase of pulsar wind nebulae. Reverberation brings a significant evolution in a short period of time. We show that even the Crab nebula, associated to the more energetic pulsar of the sample we consider, has a period in its future time evolution where the X-ray luminosity will exceed the spin-down power at the time. In fact, all nebulae in our sample are expected to have a period of radio, X-ray, and GeV superefficiency, and most will also have a period of TeV superefficiency. We analyze and characterize these superefficient phases.