Kavli Affiliate: Herman L. Marshall
| First 5 Authors: Roger W. Romani, Josephine Wong, Niccolo Di Lalla, Nicola Omodei, Fei Xie
| Summary:
We describe IXPE polarization observations of the Pulsar Wind Nebula (PWN)
MSH15-52, the `Cosmic Hand’. We find X-ray polarization across the PWN, with B
field vectors generally aligned with filamentary X-ray structures. High
significance polarization is seen in arcs surrounding the pulsar and toward the
end of the `jet’, with polarization degree PD>70%, thus approaching the maximum
allowed synchrotron value. In contrast, the base of the jet has lower
polarization, indicating a complex magnetic field at significant angle to the
jet axis. We also detect significant polarization from PSR B1509-58 itself.
Although only the central pulse-phase bin of the pulse has high individual
significance, flanking bins provide lower significance detections and, in
conjunction with the X-ray image and radio polarization, can be used to
constrain rotating vector model solutions for the pulsar geometry.
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