A CANDIDATE OPTICAL COUNTERPART TO THE MIDDLE AGED γ-RAY PULSAR PSR J1741–2054*

We carried out deep optical observations of the middle aged γ-ray pulsar PSR J1741−2054 with the Very Large Telescope (VLT). We identified two objects, of magnitudes m v = 23.10 ± 0.05 and m > v = 25.32 ± 0.08, at positions consistent with the very accurate Chandra coordinates of the pulsar, the faintest of which is more likely to be its counterpart. From the VLT images we also detected the known bow-shock nebula around PSR J1741−2054. The nebula is displaced by ∼0.″9 (at the 3σ confidence level) with respect to its position measured in archival data, showing that the shock propagates in the interstellar medium consistently with the pulsar proper motion. Finally, we could not find evidence of large-scale extended optical emission associated with the pulsar wind nebula detected by Chandra, down to a surface brightness limit of ∼28.1 mag arcsec2. Future observations are needed to confirm the optical identification of PSR J1741−2054 and characterize the spectrum of its counterpart.