Title:
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Pulsar optical observation with the Very Large Telescope


Authors:
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Alak Ray, Peter Lundqvist, Jesper Sollerman, Bruno Leibundgut, Firoza Sutaria


Abstract:
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Optical data in the V-band gathered with the 8.2m ESO Very Large Telescope
(VLT) at the radiointerferometric position of the PSR 1706-44 are presented.
The pulsar is close to a bright star in projection and was not detected.
The pulsar magnitude limit must be fainter than V=24.5 for a ditance 
of =< 2.0 arcsec from the bright star. In the outer gap model for an aligned
rotor the optical flux should scale with the gamma-ray flux. For pulsars
which emit pulsed gamma-rays but are not detected in the optical bands,
the synchrotron cutoff frequency for the tertiary photons must be well
below the optical frequencies and the magnetic and spin axes may be
misaligned.

To appear in:
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Pulsar Astronomy - 2000 and Beyond, ASP Conference Series, eds. M. Kramer,
N. Wex and R. Wielebinski.