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C.-Y. Ng, R. W. Romani (Dept. of Physics, Stanford University)
Chandra X-Ray Observatory imaging has revealed toroidal structure in many pulsar wind nebulae. This structure provides important information on the direction of the pulsar spin axis. The alignment angle between the pulsar spin axis and proper motion constraints the physics of the pulsar kick at the neutron star's birth, and is thus an important probe of core collapse dynamics. We report new ACIS observations of the Vela-like pulsar PSR B1706-44, showing an equatorial torus and jets extending some 30 arcsec. The inferred spin axis points back toward the center of the supernova remnant G343.1-2.3, suggesting that this is another example of spin-kick alignment. We describe simulations of pulsar kicks generated by a simple model of asymmetric neutrino emission. The distributions of initial spin period, projected velocity and alignment angle on the sky plane are obtained for a range of kick parameters and compared with the present set of spin and proper motion measurements for young pulsars. Only a handful of young pulsars (including PSR B1706-44) have at present sufficiently accurate measurements to allow this comparison, however the data already place some constraints on the nature of the birth kick. We suggest additional observations that will make this a more sensitive probe of kick physics.
This work was supported in part by NASA Grant G04-5060X.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: ncy@astro.stanford.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.