Pulsars With Jets May Harbor Dynamically Important Accretion Disks.pdfVIP

Pulsars With Jets May Harbor Dynamically Important Accretion Disks Eric G. Blackman 1 and Rosalba Perna 2 1. Department of Physics Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 14627 2. Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-0001 3 (ApJ Lett., in press) 0 0 2 ABSTRACT c e D For many astrophysical sources with jets, there is evidence for the contemporaneous 4 presence of disks. In contrast, pulsars such as the Crab and Vela show jets but have not yet revealed direct evidence for accretion disks. Here we show that for such pulsars, 1 v an accretion disk radiating below detectable thresholds may simultaneously account 1 for (1) observed deviations in the braking indices from that of the simple dipole, (2) 4 1 observed pulsar timing ages, and (3) possibly even the jet morphology via a disk 2 outflow that interacts with the pulsar wind within, collimating and/or redirecting it. 1 3 0 / Key Words: (stars:) pulsars: general; (stars:) pulsars: individual (Crab, Vela); accretion, h accretion disks; ISM: jets and outflows; X-rays: ISM; plasmas p - o r t s 1. Introduction a : v i Recent X-ray observations have confirmed that collimated jets can be found emanating from X pulsar engines (Weisskopf et al. 2000; Helfand et al. 2001; Gaensler et al. 2002; Slane 2002; r a Pavlov et al. 2003). These jets morphologically resemble those of young stellar objects (Reipurth Bally 2001), planetary nebulae, (Balick Frank 2002) active galactic nuclei (