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Pulsars in gamma rays: What Fermi is teaching us

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2013

Matthew Kerr  and
the Fermi-LAT Collaboration
Matthew Kerr
Affiliation:
Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA email: kerrm@stanford.edu
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Abstract

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The 2nd Fermi-LAT pulsar catalog includes 117 γ-ray pulsars, of which roughly one third are millisecond pulsars (MSPs) while the remaining two thirds split evenly into young radio-loud and radio-quiet pulsars. Although this large population will enable future, detailed studies of emission mechanisms and the evolution of the underlying neutron star population, some nearly-universal properties are already clear and unequivocal. We discuss some of these aspects below, including the altitude of the γ-ray emission site, the shape of the γ-ray spectrum, and the implications of the latter for the radiation mechanism.

Keywords

pulsar: generalgamma rays: observationsradiation mechanisms: nonthermal

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