XMM-Newton observations of the Vela pulsar

Abstract

We present spectral analysis from XMM-Newton observations of the Vela pulsar. We analyzed thermal emission from the pulsar dominating below ~1 keV since extracted spectra are heavily contaminated by nebular emission at higher energy. Featureless high-resolution spectra of the reflection grating spectrometer aboard XMM-Newton suggest the presence of a hydrogen atmosphere, as previously indicated by Chandra results. Both the temperature and radius are consistent with those values deduced from Chandra. The derived Chandra and XMM-Newton temperature of T^∞~=(6.4-7.1)×10⁵ K at its age of ~10⁴ years is below the standard cooling curve.