Open AccessLimits on radio emission from pulsar wind nebulae
Author(s) -
Gaensler B. M.,
Stappers B. W.,
Frail D. A.,
Moffett D. A.,
Johnston S.,
Chatterjee S.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-8711.2000.03626.x
Subject(s) - pulsar , physics , astrophysics , luminosity , astronomy , pulsar wind nebula , green bank telescope , range (aeronautics) , galaxy , supernova , supernova remnant , materials science , composite material
We report on a sensitive survey for radio pulsar wind nebulae (PWN) towards 27 energetic and/or high‐velocity pulsars. Observations were carried out at 1.4 GHz using the Very Large Array and the Australia Telescope Compact Array and utilized pulsar‐gating to search for off‐pulse emission. These observing parameters resulted in a considerably more sensitive search than previous surveys and could detect PWN over a much wider range of spatial scales (and hence ambient densities and pulsar velocities). However, no emission clearly corresponding to a PWN was discovered. Based on these non‐detections we argue that the young and energetic pulsars in our sample have winds which are typical of young pulsars, but produce unobservable PWN because they reside in low‐density ( n ∼0.003 cm −3 ) regions of the interstellar medium. However, non‐detection of PWN around older and less energetic pulsars can only be explained if the radio luminosity of their winds is less than 10 −5 of their spin‐down luminosity, implying an efficiency at least an order of magnitude smaller than that seen for young pulsars.