Spectral Feature at 3.7 keV in the Slowly Rotating Central Compact Object in RCW 103
Gordon Garmire (Penn State University) , Audrey Garmire (Penn State)
A series of nineteen monitoring observations of the CCO in RCW 103 were carried out from 2000 to 2005. During these observations a large flare was observed to have occurred sometime before 2000 February 8. The following six years of observation revealed a very slow, but steady decline in the source intensity. About half way through the decline a significant absorption line appeared in the spectrum of the source at an energy of about 3.7 keV. It was observed during four of the nineteen observations. The line appears to be rather narrow, but it could be a proton cyclotron line. Another possibility is that it is from an excited state of ionized Calcium in the surrounding nebula. If it is a cyclotron line, it would imply a magnetic field of greater than 10^14 Gauss.