SUZAKUOBSERVATIONS OF PSR B1259–63: A NEW MANIFESTATION OF RELATIVISTIC PULSAR WIND

Abstract

We observed PSR B1259−63, a young nonaccreting pulsar orbiting around a Be star SS 2883, eight times with the Suzaku satellite from 2007 July to September, to characterize the X-ray emission arising from the interaction between a pulsar relativistic wind and Be star outflows. The X-ray spectra showed a featureless continuum in 0.6–10 keV, modeled by a power law with a wide range of photon indices 1.3–1.8. When combined with the Suzaku PIN detector which allowed spectral analysis in the hard 15–50 keV band, X-ray spectra do show a break at ∼5 keV in a certain epoch. Regarding the PSR B1259−63 system as a compactified pulsar wind nebula (PWN), in which e± pairs are assumed to be accelerated at the inner shock front of the pulsar wind, we attribute the X-ray spectral break to the low-energy cutoff of the synchrotron radiation associated with the Lorentz factor of the relativistic pulsar wind γ1 ∼ 4 × 105. Our result indicates that Comptonization of stellar photons by the unshocked pulsar wind will be accessible (or tightly constrained) by observations with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope during the next periastron passage. The PSR B1259−63 system allows us to probe the fundamental properties of the pulsar wind by a direct means, being complementary to the study of large-scale PWNe.