No Arabic abstract
Recent observations of the polarisation of the optical pulses from the Crab pulsar motivated detailed comparative studies of the emission predicted by the polar cap, the outer gap and the two-pole caustics models. In this work, we study the polarisation properties of the synchrotron emission emanating from the striped wind model. We use an explicit asymptotic solution for the large-scale field structure related to the oblique split monopole and valid for the case of an ultra-relativistic plasma. This is combined with a crude model for the emissivity of the striped wind and of the magnetic field within the dissipating stripes themselves. We calculate the polarisation properties of the high-energy pulsed emission and compare our results with optical observations of the Crab pulsar. The resulting radiation is linearly polarised. In the off-pulse region, the electric vector lies in the direction of the projection on the sky of the rotation axis of the pulsar, in good agreement with the data. Other properties such as a reduced degree of polarisation and a characteristic sweep of the polarisation angle within the pulses are also reproduced.
It is generally thought that most of the spin-down power of a pulsar is carried away in an MHD wind dominated by Poynting flux. In the case of an oblique rotator, a significant part of this energy can be considered to be in a low-frequency wave, consisting of stripes of toroidal magnetic field of alternating polarity, propagating in a region around the equatorial plane. Magnetic reconnection in such a structure has been proposed as a mechanism for transforming the Poynting flux into particle energy in the pulsar wind. We have re-examined this process and conclude that the wind accelerates significantly in the course of reconnection. This dilates the timescale over which the reconnection process operates, so that the wind requires a much larger distance than was previously thought in order to convert the Poynting flux to particle flux. In the case of the Crab, the wind is still Poynting-dominated at the radius at which a standing shock is inferred from observation. An estimate of the radius of the termination shock for other pulsars implies that all except the milli-second pulsars have Poynting-flux dominated winds all the way out to the shock front.
Pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) are main gamma-ray emitters in the Galactic plane. Although the leptonic scenario is able to explain most PWNe emission well, a hadronic contribution cannot be excluded. High-energy emission raises the possibility that gamma-rays are hadronically produced which inevitably leads to the production of neutrinos. We report a stacking analysis to search for neutrino emission from 35 PWNe that are very-high-energy gamma-ray emitters and the results using 9.5 years of all-sky IceCube data. In the absence of any significant correlation, we set upper limits on the total neutrino emission from those PWNe and constraints on the hadronic component.
Pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) are the main gamma-ray emitters in the Galactic plane. They are diffuse nebulae that emit nonthermal radiation. Pulsar winds, relativistic magnetized outflows from the central star, shocked in the ambient medium produce a multiwavelength emission from the radio through gamma rays. Although the leptonic scenario is able to explain most PWNe emission, a hadronic contribution cannot be excluded. A possible hadronic contribution to the high-energy gamma-ray emission inevitably leads to the production of neutrinos. Using 9.5 yr of all-sky IceCube data, we report results from a stacking analysis to search for neutrino emission from 35 PWNe that are high-energy gamma-ray emitters. In the absence of any significant correlation, we set upper limits on the total neutrino emission from those PWNe and constraints on hadronic spectral components.
The vast majority of the pulsars detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) display spectra with exponential cutoffs falling in a narrow range around a few GeV. Early spectral modelling predicted spectral cutoff energies of up to 100 GeV. More modern studies estimated spectral cutoff energies in the 1-20 GeV range. It was therefore not expected that pulsars would be visible in the very-high-energy (VHE; >100 GeV) regime. The VERITAS detection (confirmed by MAGIC) of pulsed emission from the Crab pulsar up to 400 GeV (and now possibly up to 1 TeV) therefore raised important questions about our understanding of the electrodynamics and local environment of pulsars. H.E.S.S. has now detected pulsed emission from the Vela pulsar in the 20-120 GeV range, making this the second pulsar detected by a ground-based Cherenkov telescope. We will review the latest developments in VHE pulsar science, including an overview of recent observations and refinements to radiation models and magnetic field structures. This will assist us in interpreting the VHE emission detected from the Crab and Vela pulsars, and predicting the level of VHE emission expected from other pulsars, which will be very important for the upcoming CTA.
The detection of bright X-ray features and large TeV halos around old pulsars that have escaped their parent Supernova Remnants and are interacting directly with the ISM, suggest that high energy particles, more likely high energy pairs, can escape from these systems, and that this escape if far more complex than a simple diffusive model can predict. Here we present for the first time a detailed analysis of how high energy particles escape from the head of the bow shock. In particular we focus our attention on the role of the magnetic field geometry, and the inclination of the pulsar spin axis with respect to the direction of the pulsar kick velocity. We show that asymmetries in the escape pattern of charged particles are common, and they are strongly energy dependent. More interestingly we show that the flow of particles from bow-shock pulsar wind nebulae is likely to be charge separated, which might have profound consequences on the way such flow interacts with the ISM magnetic field, driving local turbulence.