Long-term study of the 2020 magnetar-like outburst of the young pulsar PSRJ1846-0258 in Kes 75

TL;DR

This paper presents a long-term observational study of the 2020 magnetar-like outburst of PSR J1846-0258, revealing significant changes in timing and spectral properties, and providing insights into the emission mechanisms of high magnetic field pulsars.

Contribution

It reports the first detailed long-term timing and spectral analysis of the 2020 outburst, highlighting variability and magnetospheric activity in a high magnetic field pulsar.

Findings

Pulsed flux increased by over six times during outburst

Detected variability in the spin-down rate post-outburst

Hints of oscillations in frequency derivative with 50-60 day timescale

Abstract

Magnetar-like activity has been observed in a large variety of neutron stars. PSR J1846-0258 is a young 327 ms radio-quiet pulsar with a large rotational power ($\sim 8 \times 10^{36}$ erg s$^{-1}$), and resides at the center of the supernova remnant Kes 75. It is one of the rare examples of a high magnetic field pulsar showing characteristics both of magnetars and radio pulsars, and can thus provide important clues on the differences in the emission mechanisms between these two classes. In 2006, PSR J1846-0258 was detected to undergo an outburst for the first time, accompanied by a large flux increase, millisecond X-ray bursts, significant spectral changes and a large timing glitch. In the period between May-June 2020, after fourteen years of quiescent stable emission, the source underwent a second magnetar-like outburst, which was followed up with several observations by NICER, XMM-Newton, NuSTAR and Swift. In this work, we report on the long-term timing and X-ray spectral properties of the source following the 2020 outburst, and place upper limits on any source activity at radio wavelengths. We demonstrate that the pulsed flux increased by a factor $> 6$ during the outburst, followed by non-trivial variability in the spin-down rate. Our timing analysis shows that the spin frequency and its derivative are clearly affected by magnetospheric activity due to the outburst. We find hints for an oscillation in the frequency derivative with a timescale of 50-60 days, recovering later on to stable quiescence.