A Search for X-ray Counterparts of Radio Pulsars

Abstract

We describe a systematic search for X-ray counterparts of radio pulsars. The search was accomplished by cross-correlating the radio timing positions of all radio pulsars from the ATNF pulsar database (version 1.54) with archival XMM-Newton and Chandra observations publicly released by July 1st 2016. In total, 178 of the archival XMM-Newton observations and 213 of the archival Chandra datasets where found to have a radio pulsar serendipitously in the field of view. From the 288 radio pulsars covered by these datasets we identified 20 previously undetected X-ray counterparts. For 6 of them the statistics was sufficient to model the energy spectrum with one- or two-component models. For the remaining new detections and for those pulsars for which we determined an upper limit to their counting rate we computed the energy flux by assuming a Crab-like spectrum. Additionally, we derived upper limits on the neutron stars' surface temperature and on the non-thermal X-ray efficiency for those pulsars for which the spin-down energy was known. The temperature upper limits where compared with predictions from various neutron star cooling models and where found to be in agreement with the minimal cooling paradigm