We report the detection of pulsed gamma rays from the Crab pulsar at energies above 100 Gigaelectronvolts (GeV) with the VERITAS array of atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. The detection cannot be explained on the basis of current pulsar models. The photon spectrum of pulsed emission between 100 Megaelectronvolts (MeV) and 400 GeV is described by a broken power law that is statistically preferred over a power law with an exponential cutoff. It is unlikely that the observation can be explained by invoking curvature radiation as the origin of the observed gamma rays above 100 GeV. Our findings require that these gamma rays be produced more than 10 stellar radii from the neutron star.
The First fermi-LAT Catalog of Sources Above 10 GeV reported evidence of pulsed emission above 25 GeV from 12 pulsars, including the Vela pulsar, which showed evidence of pulsation at $>37$ GeV energy bands. Using 62 months of fermi-LAT data, we analyzed the gamma-ray emission from the Vela pulsar and searched for pulsed emission above 50 GeV. Having confirmed the significance of the pulsation in 30-50 GeV with the H-test (p-value $sim10^{-77}$), we extracted its pulse profile using the Bayesian block algorithm and compared it with the distribution of the 5 observed photons above 50 GeV using the likelihood ratio test. Pulsation was significantly detected for photons above 50 GeV with p-value $=3times10^{-5}$ ($4.2sigma$). The detection of pulsation is significant above $4sigma$ at $>79$ GeV and above $3sigma$ at $>90$ GeV energy bands, making this the highest energy pulsation significantly detected by the LAT. We explore non-stationary outer gap scenario of the very high-energy emissions from the Vela pulsar.
The Crab pulsar is the only astronomical pulsed source detected at very high energy (VHE, E>100GeV) gamma-rays. The emission mechanism of VHE pulsation is not yet fully understood, although several theoretical models have been proposed. In order to test the new models, we measured the light curve and the spectra of the Crab pulsar with high precision by means of deep observations. We analyzed 135 hours of selected MAGIC data taken between 2009 and 2013 in stereoscopic mode. In order to discuss the spectral shape in connection with lower energies, 4.6 years of {it Fermi}-LAT data were also analyzed. The known two pulses per period were detected with a significance of $8.0 sigma$ and $12.6 sigma$. In addition, significant emission was found between the two pulses with $6.2 sigma$. We discovered the bridge emission above 50 GeV between the two main pulses. This emission can not be explained with the existing theories. These data can be used for testing new theoretical models.
We report on the measurement and investigation of pulsed high-energy $gamma$-ray emission from the Vela pulsar, PSR B0833$-$45, based on 40.3 hours of observations with the largest telescope of H.E.S.S., CT5, in monoscopic mode, and on 8 years of data obtained with the Fermi-LAT. A dedicated very-low-threshold event reconstruction and analysis pipeline was developed and, together with the CT5 telescope response model, was validated using the Fermi-LAT data as reference. A pulsed $gamma$-ray signal at a significance level of more than $15sigma$ is detected from the P2 peak of the Vela pulsar light curve. Of a total of 15835 events, more than 6000 lie at an energy below 20 GeV, implying a significant overlap between H.E.S.S. II-CT5 and the Fermi-LAT. While the investigation of the pulsar light curve with the LAT confirms characteristics previously known up to 20 GeV, in the tens of GeV energy range, CT5 data show a change in the pulse morphology of P2, i.e., an extreme sharpening of its trailing edge, together with the possible onset of a new component at 3.4$sigma$ significance level. Assuming a power-law model for the P2 spectrum, an excellent agreement is found for the photon indices ($Gamma simeq$ 4.1) obtained with the two telescopes above 10 GeV and an upper bound of 8% is derived on the relative offset between their energy scales. Using both instruments data, it is however shown that the spectrum of P2 in the 10-100 GeV has a pronounced curvature, i.e. a confirmation of the sub-exponential cutoff form found at lower energies with the LAT. This is further supported by the weak evidence for an emission above 100 GeV obtained with CT5. In contrast, converging indications are found from both CT5 and LAT data for the emergence of a hard component above 50 GeV in the leading wing (LW2) of P2, which possibly extends beyond 100 GeV.
Carpet is an air-shower array at Baksan, Russia, equipped with a large-area muon detector, which makes it possible to separate primary photons from hadrons. We report first results of the search for primary photons with energies E>100 TeV. The experiments ongoing upgrade and future sensitivity are also discussed.
Aims: To investigate the extension of the very-high-energy spectral tail of the Crab pulsar at energies above 400 GeV. Methods: We analyzed $sim$320 hours of good quality data of Crab with the MAGIC telescope, obtained from February 2007 until April 2014. Results: We report the most energetic pulsed emission ever detected from the Crab pulsar reaching up to 1.5 TeV. The pulse profile shows two narrow peaks synchronized with the ones measured in the GeV energy range. The spectra of the two peaks follow two different power-law functions from 70 GeV up to 1.5 TeV and connect smoothly with the spectra measured above 10 GeV by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board of the Fermi satellite. When making a joint fit of the LAT and MAGIC data, above 10 GeV, the photon indices of the spectra differ by 0.5$pm$0.1. Conclusions: We measured with the MAGIC telescopes the most energetic pulsed photons from a pulsar to date. Such TeV pulsed photons require a parent population of electrons with a Lorentz factor of at least $5times 10^6$. These results strongly suggest IC scattering off low energy photons as the emission mechanism and a gamma-ray production region in the vicinity of the light cylinder.