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Register a new userThe Crab Pulsar at Centimeter Wavelengths: I. Ensemble Characteristics
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We have observed the pulsar in the Crab Nebula at high radio frequencies and high time resolution. We present continuously sampled data at 640-ns time resolution, and individual bright pulses recorded at down to 0.25-ns time resolution. Combining our new data with previous data from our group and from the literature shows the dramatic changes in the pulsars radio emission between low and high radio frequencies. Below about 5 GHz the mean profile is dominated by the bright Main Pulse and Low-Frequency Interpulse. Everything changes, however, above about 5 GHz; the Main Pulse disappears, the mean profile of the Crab pulsar is dominated by the High-Frequency Interpulse (which is quite different from its low-frequency counterpart) and the two High-Frequency Components. We present detailed observational characteristics of these different components which future models of the pulsars magnetosphere must explain.
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We have carried out new, high-frequency, high-time-resolution observations of the Crab pulsar. Combining these with our previous data, we characterize bright single pulses associated with the Main Pulse, both the Low-Frequency and High-Frequency Interpulses, and the two High-Frequency Components. Our data include observations at frequencies ranging from 1 to 43 GHz with time resolution down to a fraction of a nanosecond. We find at least two types of emission physics are operating in this pulsar. Both Main Pulses and Low-Frequency Interpulses, up to about 10 GHz, are characterized by nanoshot emission - overlapping clumps of narrow-band nanoshots, each with its own polarization signature. High-Frequency Interpulses, between 5 and 30 GHz, are characterized by spectral band emission - linearly polarized emission containing about 30 proportionately spaced spectral bands. We cannot say whether the longer-duration High-Frequency Component pulses are due to a scattering process, or if they come from yet another type of emission physics.
The last six years have witnessed major revisions of our knowledge about the Crab Pulsar. The consensus scenario for the origin of the high-energy pulsed emission has been challenged with the discovery of a very-high-energy power law tail extending up to 400 GeV, above the expected spectral cut off at a few GeV. Now, new measurements obtained by the MAGIC collaboration extend the energy spectrum of the Crab Pulsar even further, on the TeV regime. Above 400 GeV the pulsed emission comes mainly from the inter-pulse, which becomes more prominent with energy due to a harder spectral index. These findings require gamma-ray production via inverse Compton scattering close to or beyond the light cylinder radius by an underlying particle population with Lorentz factors greater than 5 times 106. We will present those new results and discuss the implications in our current knowledge concerning pulsar environments.
Detecting and studying pulsars above a few GHz in the radio band is challenging due to the typical faintness of pulsar radio emission, their steep spectra, and the lack of observatories with sufficient sensitivity operating at high frequency ranges. Despite the difficulty, the observations of pulsars at high radio frequencies are valuable because they can help us to understand the radio emission process, complete a census of the Galactic pulsar population, and possibly discover the elusive population in the Galactic Centre, where low-frequency observations have problems due to the strong scattering. During the decades of the 1990s and 2000s, the availability of sensitive instrumentation allowed for the detection of a small sample of pulsars above 10$,$GHz, and for the first time in the millimetre band. Recently, new attempts between 3 and 1$,$mm ($approx$86$-$300$,$GHz) have resulted in the detections of a pulsar and a magnetar up to the highest radio frequencies to date, reaching 291$,$GHz (1.03$,$mm). The efforts continue, and the advent of new or upgraded millimetre facilities like the IRAM 30-m, NOEMA, the LMT, and ALMA, warrants a new era of high-sensitivity millimetre pulsar astronomy in the upcoming years.
We have observed the Crab Pulsar in the optical with S-Cam, an instrument based on Superconducting Tunneling Junctions (STJs) with $mu$s time resolution. Our aim was to study the delay between the radio and optical pulse. The Crab Pulsar was observed three times over a time span of almost 7 years, on two different locations, using three differe
The Crab nebula is one of the most studied cosmic particle accelerators, shining brightly across the entire electromagnetic spectrum up to very high-energy gamma rays. It is known from radio to gamma-ray observations that the nebula is powered by a pulsar, which converts most of its rotational energy losses into a highly relativistic outflow. This outflow powers a pulsar wind nebula (PWN), a region of up to 10~light-years across, filled with relativistic electrons and positrons. These particles emit synchrotron photons in the ambient magnetic field and produce very high-energy gamma rays by Compton up-scattering of ambient low-energy photons. While the synchrotron morphology of the nebula is well established, it was up to now not known in which region the very high-energy gamma rays are emitted. Here we report that the Crab nebula has an angular extension at gamma-ray energies of 52 arcseconds (assuming a Gaussian source width), significantly larger than at X-ray energies. This result closes a gap in the multi-wavelength coverage of the nebula, revealing the emission region of the highest energy gamma rays. These gamma rays are a new probe of a previously inaccessible electron and positron energy range. We find that simulations of the electromagnetic emission reproduce our new measurement, providing a non-trivial test of our understanding of particle acceleration in the Crab nebula.
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