Program

Hard X-ray Characteristics of Anomalous X-ray Pulsars: Results from RXTE and INTEGRAL

Peter R. den Hartog

SRON - Netherlands Institute for Space Research

Abstract:

Until recently anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) were known as soft X-ray emitters. This has changed drastically since the discovery of hard X-ray emission (>10 keV) from several AXPs by INTEGRAL (Molkov et al. 2004, Revnivtsev et al. 2004 and den Hartog et al. 2004). Kuiper et al. (2004) discovered pulsed emission in the same energy range using RXTE (PCA and HEXTE) data. Currently four AXPs (1RXS J170849.0-400910, 1E 1841-045, 4U 0142+614 and 1E 2259+586) have been detected, some of them showing emission up to 200 keV. The spectra exhibit extremely hard power laws with photon indices < 1.0 and with apparent luminosities 2-3 orders of magnitude above the rotational energy loss. The origin of this behaviour is not yet understood. An overview containing the current observational status in the temporal and the spectral domains as well as future prospects of AXPs at high energies is presented.

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