| 1. |
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| 2. |
- Abdo, A. A., et al.
(författare)
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The first fermi large area telescope catalog of gamma-ray pulsars
- 2010
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. - : American Astronomical Society. - 0067-0049 .- 1538-4365. ; 187:2, s. 460-494
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The dramatic increase in the number of known gamma-ray pulsars since the launch of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (formerly GLAST) offers the first opportunity to study a sizable population of these high-energy objects. This catalog summarizes 46 high-confidence pulsed detections using the first six months of data taken by the Large Area Telescope (LAT), Fermi's main instrument. Sixteen previously unknown pulsars were discovered by searching for pulsed signals at the positions of bright gamma-ray sources seen with the LAT, or at the positions of objects suspected to be neutron stars based on observations at other wavelengths. The dimmest observed flux among these gamma-ray-selected pulsars is 6.0 x 10(-8) ph cm(-2) s(-1) (for E > 100 MeV). Pulsed gamma-ray emission was discovered from 24 known pulsars by using ephemerides (timing solutions) derived from monitoring radio pulsars. Eight of these new gamma-ray pulsars are millisecond pulsars. The dimmest observed flux among the radio-selected pulsars is 1.4 x 10(-8) ph cm(-2) s(-1) (for E > 100 MeV). The remaining six gamma-ray pulsars were known since the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory mission, or before. The limiting flux for pulse detection is non-uniform over the sky owing to different background levels, especially near the Galactic plane. The pulsed energy spectra can be described by a power law with an exponential cutoff, with cutoff energies in the range similar to 1-5 GeV. The rotational energy-loss rate ((E) over dot) of these neutron stars spans five decades, from similar to 3 x 10(33) erg s(-1) to 5 x 10(38) erg s(-1), and the apparent efficiencies for conversion to gammaray emission range from similar to 0.1% to similar to unity, although distance uncertainties complicate efficiency estimates. The pulse shapes show substantial diversity, but roughly 75% of the gamma-ray pulse profiles have two peaks, separated by greater than or similar to 0.2 of rotational phase. For most of the pulsars, gamma-ray emission appears to come mainly from the outer magnetosphere, while polar-cap emission remains plausible for a remaining few. Spatial associations imply that many of these pulsars power pulsar wind nebulae. Finally, these discoveries suggest that gamma-ray-selected young pulsars are born at a rate comparable to that of their radio-selected cousins and that the birthrate of all young gamma-ray-detected pulsars is a substantial fraction of the expected Galactic supernova rate.
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| 3. |
- Acciari, V. A., et al.
(författare)
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Discovery of very high energy gamma rays from PKS 1424+240 and multiwavelength constraints on ITS redshift
- 2010
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Ingår i: ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS. - 2041-8205. ; 708:2, s. L100-L106
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report the first detection of very high energy(83) (VHE) gamma-ray emission above 140 GeV from PKS 1424+240, a BL Lac object with an unknown redshift. The photon spectrum above 140 GeV measured by VERITAS is well described by a power law with a photon index of 3.8 +/- 0.5(stat) +/- 0.3(syst) and a flux normalization at 200 GeV of (5.1 +/- 0.9(stat) +/- 0.5(syst)) x 10(-11) TeV-1 cm(-2) s(-1), where stat and syst denote the statistical and systematical uncertainties, respectively. The VHE flux is steady over the observation period between MJD 54881 and 55003 (from 2009 February 19 to June 21). Flux variability is also not observed in contemporaneous high-energy observations with the Fermi Large Area Telescope. Contemporaneous X-ray and optical data were also obtained from the Swift XRT and MDM observatory, respectively. The broadband spectral energy distribution is well described by a one-zone synchrotron self-Compton model favoring a redshift of less than 0.1. Using the photon index measured with Fermi in combination with recent extragalactic background light absorption models it can be concluded from the VERITAS data that the redshift of PKS 1424+240 is less than 0.66.
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| 4. |
- Ackermann, M., et al.
(författare)
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The fermi large area telescope on orbit : Event classification, instrument response functions, and calibration
- 2012
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. - : American Astronomical Society. - 0067-0049 .- 1538-4365. ; 203:1, s. 4-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT, hereafter LAT), the primary instrument on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (Fermi) mission, is an imaging, wide field-of-view, high-energy γ-ray telescope, covering the energy range from 20MeV to more than 300GeV. During the first years of the mission, the LAT team has gained considerable insight into the in-flight performance of the instrument. Accordingly, we have updated the analysis used to reduce LAT data for public release as well as the instrument response functions (IRFs), the description of the instrument performance provided for data analysis. In this paper, we describe the effects that motivated these updates. Furthermore, we discuss how we originally derived IRFs from Monte Carlo simulations and later corrected those IRFs for discrepancies observed between flight and simulated data. We also give details of the validations performed using flight data and quantify the residual uncertainties in the IRFs. Finally, we describe techniques the LAT team has developed to propagate those uncertainties into estimates of the systematic errors on common measurements such as fluxes and spectra of astrophysical sources.
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| 5. |
- Freire, P. C. C., et al.
(författare)
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Fermi Detection of a Luminous gamma-Ray Pulsar in a Globular Cluster
- 2011
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 334:6059, s. 1107-1110
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report on the Fermi Large Area Telescope's detection of gamma-ray (>100 mega-electron volts) pulsations from pulsar J1823-3021A in the globular cluster NGC 6624 with high significance (similar to 7 sigma). Its gamma-ray luminosity, L(gamma) = (8.4 +/- 1.6) x 10(34) ergs per second, is the highest observed for any millisecond pulsar (MSP) to date, and it accounts for most of the cluster emission. The nondetection of the cluster in the off-pulse phase implies that it contains <32 gamma-ray MSPs, not similar to 100 as previously estimated. The gamma-ray luminosity indicates that the unusually large rate of change of its period is caused by its intrinsic spin-down. This implies that J1823-3021A has the largest magnetic field and is the youngest MSP ever detected and that such anomalous objects might be forming at rates comparable to those of the more normal MSPs.
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| 6. |
- Weltevrede, P., et al.
(författare)
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Gamma-ray and radio properties of six pulsars detected by the Fermi large area telescope
- 2010
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 708:2, s. 1426-1441
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report the detection of pulsed gamma-rays for PSRs J0631+1036, J0659+1414, J0742-2822, J1420-6048, J1509-5850, and J1718-3825 using the Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (formerly known as GLAST). Although these six pulsars are diverse in terms of their spin parameters, they share an important feature: their gamma-ray light curves are (at least given the current count statistics) single peaked. For two pulsars, there are hints for a double-peaked structure in the light curves. The shapes of the observed light curves of this group of pulsars are discussed in the light of models for which the emission originates from high up in the magnetosphere. The observed phases of the gamma-ray light curves are, in general, consistent with those predicted by high-altitude models, although we speculate that the gamma-ray emission of PSR J0659+1414, possibly featuring the softest spectrum of all Fermi pulsars coupled with a very low efficiency, arises from relatively low down in the magnetosphere. High-quality radio polarization data are available showing that all but one have a high degree of linear polarization. This allows us to place some constraints on the viewing geometry and aids the comparison of the gamma-ray light curves with high-energy beam models.
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| 7. |
- Abdo, A. A., et al.
(författare)
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The spectral energy distribution of fermi bright blazars
- 2010
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 716:1, s. 30-70
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We have conducted a detailed investigation of the broadband spectral properties of the gamma-ray selected blazars of the Fermi LAT Bright AGN Sample (LBAS). By combining our accurately estimated Fermi gamma-ray spectra with Swift, radio, infra-red, optical, and other hard X-ray/gamma-ray data, collected within 3 months of the LBAS data taking period, we were able to assemble high-quality and quasi-simultaneous spectral energy distributions (SED) for 48 LBAS blazars. The SED of these gamma-ray sources is similar to that of blazars discovered at other wavelengths, clearly showing, in the usual log nu-log nu F-nu representation, the typical broadband spectral signatures normally attributed to a combination of low-energy synchrotron radiation followed by inverse Compton emission of one or more components. We have used these SED to characterize the peak intensity of both the low-and the high-energy components. The results have been used to derive empirical relationships that estimate the position of the two peaks from the broadband colors (i.e., the radio to optical, alpha(ro), and optical to X-ray, alpha(ox), spectral slopes) and from the gamma-ray spectral index. Our data show that the synchrotron peak frequency (nu(S)(peak)) is positioned between 10(12.5) and 10(14.5) Hz in broad-lined flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) and between 10(13) and 10(17) Hz in featureless BL Lacertae objects. We find that the gamma-ray spectral slope is strongly correlated with the synchrotron peak energy and with the X-ray spectral index, as expected at first order in synchrotron-inverse Compton scenarios. However, simple homogeneous, one-zone, synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) models cannot explain most of our SED, especially in the case of FSRQs and low energy peaked (LBL) BL Lacs. More complex models involving external Compton radiation or multiple SSC components are required to reproduce the overall SED and the observed spectral variability. While more than 50% of known radio bright high energy peaked (HBL) BL Lacs are detected in the LBAS sample, only less than 13% of known bright FSRQs and LBL BL Lacs are included. This suggests that the latter sources, as a class, may be much fainter gamma-ray emitters than LBAS blazars, and could in fact radiate close to the expectations of simple SSC models. We categorized all our sources according to a new physical classification scheme based on the generally accepted paradigm for Active Galactic Nuclei and on the results of this SED study. Since the LAT detector is more sensitive to flat spectrum gamma-ray sources, the correlation between nu(S)(peak) and gamma-ray spectral index strongly favors the detection of high energy peaked blazars, thus explaining the Fermi overabundance of this type of sources compared to radio and EGRET samples. This selection effect is similar to that experienced in the soft X-ray band where HBL BL Lacs are the dominant type of blazars.
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| 8. |
- Ackermann, M., et al.
(författare)
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Determination of the point-spread function for the fermi large area telescope from on-orbit data and limits on pair halos of active galactic nuclei
- 2013
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 765:1, s. 54-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a pair-conversion telescope designed to detect photons with energies from approximate to 20 MeV to > 300 GeV. The pre-launch response functions of the LAT were determined through extensive Monte Carlo simulations and beam tests. The point-spread function (PSF) characterizing the angular distribution of reconstructed photons as a function of energy and geometry in the detector is determined here from two years of on-orbit data by examining the distributions of gamma rays from pulsars and active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Above 3 GeV, the PSF is found to be broader than the pre-launch PSF. We checked for dependence of the PSF on the class of gamma-ray source and observation epoch and found none. We also investigated several possible spatial models for pair-halo emission around BL Lac AGNs. We found no evidence for a component with spatial extension larger than the PSF and set upper limits on the amplitude of halo emission in stacked images of low-and high-redshift BL Lac AGNs and the TeV blazars 1ES0229 + 200 and 1ES0347-121.
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| 9. |
- Abdo, A. A., et al.
(författare)
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DETECTION OF THE ENERGETIC PULSAR PSR B1509-58 AND ITS PULSAR WIND NEBULA IN MSH 15-52 USING THE FERMI-LARGE AREA TELESCOPE
- 2010
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 714:1, s. 927-936
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report the detection of high-energy gamma-ray emission from the young and energetic pulsar PSR B1509-58 and its pulsar wind nebula (PWN) in the composite supernova remnant G320.4-1.2 (aka MSH 15-52). Using 1 yr of survey data with the Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT), we detected pulsations from PSR B1509-58 up to 1 GeV and extended gamma-ray emission above 1 GeV spatially coincident with the PWN. The pulsar light curve presents two peaks offset from the radio peak by phases 0.96 +/- 0.01 and 0.33 +/- 0.02. New constraining upper limits on the pulsar emission are derived below 1 GeV and confirm a severe spectral break at a few tens of MeV. The nebular spectrum in the 1-100 GeV energy range is well described by a power law with a spectral index of (1.57 +/- 0.17 +/- 0.13) and a flux above 1 GeV of (2.91 +/- 0.79 +/- 1.35) x 10(-9) cm(-2) s(-1). The first errors represent the statistical errors on the fit parameters, while the second ones are the systematic uncertainties. The LAT spectrum of the nebula connects nicely with Cherenkov observations, and indicates a spectral break between GeV and TeV energies.
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| 10. |
- Abdo, A. A., et al.
(författare)
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Fermi large area telescope observations of PSR J1836+5925
- 2010
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 712:2, s. 1209-1218
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The discovery of the gamma-ray pulsar PSR J1836+5925, powering the formerly unidentified EGRET source 3EG J1835+5918, was one of the early accomplishments of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). Sitting 25 degrees off the Galactic plane, PSR J1836+5925 is a 173 ms pulsar with a characteristic age of 1.8 million years, a spindown luminosity of 1.1 x 10(34) erg s(-1), and a large off-peak (OP) emission component, making it quite unusual among the known gamma-ray pulsar population. We present an analysis of one year of LAT data, including an updated timing solution, detailed spectral results, and a long-term light curve showing no indication of variability. No evidence for a surrounding pulsar wind nebula is seen and the spectral characteristics of the OP emission indicate it is likely magnetospheric. Analysis of recent XMM-Newton observations of the X-ray counterpart yields a detailed characterization of its spectrum, which, like Geminga, is consistent with that of a neutron star showing evidence for both magnetospheric and thermal emission.
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