Multi-wavelength Observations of the Radio Magnetar PSR J1622-4950 and Discovery of its Possibly Associated Supernova Remnant

摘要

We present multi-wavelength observations of the radio magnetar PSR J1622-4950and its environment. Observations of PSR J1622-4950 with Chandra (in 2007 and2009) and XMM (in 2011) show that the X-ray flux of PSR J1622-4950 hasdecreased by a factor of ~50 over 3.7 years, decaying exponentially with acharacteristic time of 360 +/- 11 days. This behavior identifies PSR J1622-4950as a possible addition to the small class of transient magnetars. The X-raydecay likely indicates that PSR J1622-4950 is recovering from an X-ray outburstthat occurred earlier in 2007, before the 2007 Chandra observations.Observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array show strong radiovariability, including a possible radio flaring event at least one and a halfyears after the 2007 X-ray outburst that may be a direct result of this X-rayevent. Radio observations with the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescopereveal that PSR J1622-4950 is 8' southeast of a diffuse radio arc, G333.9+0.0,which appears non-thermal in nature and which could possibly be a previouslyundiscovered supernova remnant. If G333.9+0.0 is a supernova remnant then theestimates of its size and age, combined with the close proximity and reasonableimplied velocity of PSR J1622-4950, suggests that these two objects could bephysically associated.