IKT16: Discovery of a 22 ms energetic rotation-powered pulsar in the Small Magellanic Cloud

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a highly energetic 22 ms pulsar in the Small Magellanic Cloud, using XMM-Newton data, marking the most energetic pulsar found there and providing new insights into its properties.

Contribution

The paper presents the first period measurement of the pulsar in IKT16, identifying it as a Crab-like, energetic pulsar in the SMC, and compares it to similar known pulsars.

Findings

Discovered a 22 ms pulsar in the SMC with XMM-Newton.

Measured spin-down rate indicating Crab-like energy output.

No pulsations detected in radio or gamma-ray bands.

Abstract

We report here on the discovery with XMM-Newton of pulsations at 22 ms from the central compact source associated with IKT16, a supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The measured spin period and spin period derivative correspond to 21.7661076(2) ms and $2.9(3)\times10^{-14}$ s,s$^{-1}$, respectively. Assuming standard spin-down by magnetic dipole radiation, the spin-down power corresponds to $1.1\times10^{38}$,erg,s$^{-1}$ implying a Crab-like pulsar. This makes it the most energetic pulsar discovered in the SMC so far and a close analogue of PSR J0537--6910, a Crab-like pulsar in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The characteristic age of the pulsar is 12 kyr. Having for the first time a period measure for this source, we also searched for the signal in archival data collected in radio with the Parkes telescope and in Gamma-rays with the Fermi/LAT, but no evidence for pulsation was found in these energy bands.