A Survey for Hα Pulsar Bow Shocks

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract
Hα emitting pulsar wind bow shock nebulae are rare and beautiful objects whose study has the potential to provide insights into the nature of relativistic shocks, pulsar emission, and the composition of the ISM. We report the results of a large Hα survey of 100 Fermi pulsars to characterize the distribution of Hα pulsar bow shocks, constituting the largest and most sensitive such survey yet undertaken. By reobserving previously known Balmer shocks, we confirm the excellent sensitive of our observations and reveal additional Hα structure not previously documented around PSRs J0742-2822 and J2124-3358. Our survey discovered three additional Hα shocks of interesting morphology around PSRs J1741-2054 (already discussed in a previous publication), J2030+4415, and J1509-5850. Despite our excellent sensitivity, fully 94 of our targets have no convincing evidence of an Hα shock. We develop a novel method to characterize the sensitivity of our imaging for all frames as a function of bow shock angular size that accounts for the essential role played by the characteristic bow shock shape in aiding detections. Combining these measurements with a standard model of the ISM and the expected Hα flux of a bow shock apex, we conclude that the number of confirmed detections around all Fermi pulsars is in reasonable agreement with our model. Our results are inconsistent with a model of the ISM that predicts a significantly larger fraction of neutral material in the ISM, and our data may provide a spot-sample constraint of HI.

Description

Type of resource text
Date created May 2014

Creators/Contributors

Author Brownsberger, Sasha
Degree granting institution Stanford University, Department of Physics
Primary advisor Romani, Roger
Advisor Allen, Steve

Subjects

Subject Hα wind nebulae
Subject Fermi pulsars
Subject J1509-5850
Subject J0742-2822
Subject J2030+4415
Subject J1741-2054
Subject H-alpha wind nebulae
Subject H alpha wind nebulae
Genre Thesis

Bibliographic information

Location https://purl.stanford.edu/ys539kb7772

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License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred citation

Brownsberger, Sasha and Romani, Roger. (2014). A Survey for Hα Pulsar Bow Shocks. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/ys539kb7772

Collection

Undergraduate Theses, Department of Physics

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Contact information

sashabrownsberger@gmail.com

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