Discovery of the X-Ray Counterpart to the Rotating Radio Transient J1819–1458

We present the discovery of the first X-ray counterpart to a Rotating RAdio Transient (RRAT) source. RRAT J1819-1458 is a relatively highly magnetized (B ~ 5 × 1013 G) member of a new class of unusual pulsar-like objects discovered by their bursting activity at radio wavelengths. A Chandra observation of that position revealed a pointlike source, CXOU J181934.1-145804, with a soft spectrum well fit by an absorbed blackbody with NH = 7 × 1021 cm-2, temperature kT = 0.12 ± 0.04 keV, and an unabsorbed flux of ~2 × 10-12 ergs cm-2 s-1 between 0.5 and 8 keV. No optical or infrared (IR) counterparts are visible within 1'' of our X-ray position. The positional coincidence, spectral properties, and lack of an optical/IR counterpart make it highly likely that CXOU J181934.1-145804 is a neutron star and is the same object as RRAT J1819-1458. The source showed no variability on any timescale from the pulse period of 4.26 s up to the 5 day window covered by the observations, although our limits (especially for pulsations) are not particularly constraining. The X-ray properties of CXOU J181934.1-145804, while not yet measured to high precision, are similar to those of comparably aged radio pulsars and are consistent with thermal emission from a cooling neutron star.