Radiation efficiencies of the pulsars detected in the optical range

Abstract

Using available multiwavelength data for the pulsars of different ages detected in the optical range, we analyze the efficiencies of the conversion of the pulsar spindown power \dot{E} into the observed non-thermal luminosity L in different spectral domains. We find that these pulsars show significantly non-monotonic dependencies of the optical and X-ray efficiencies (η= L/\dot{E}) versus pulsar age with a pronounced minimum at the beginning of the middle-age epoch and comparably higher efficiencies of younger and older pulsars. In addition, we find a strong correlation between the optical and 2--10 keV X-ray luminosities of these pulsars that implies the same origin of their nonthermal emission in both spectral domains.