Jitter radiation model of the Crab gamma ray flares

Abstract

The gamma ray flares of the Crab nebula detected by Fermi and AGILE satellites challenge our understanding of physics of pulsars and their nebulae. The central problem is that the peak energy of the flares exceeds the maximum energy E_{\mathrm{c}} determined by synchrotron radiation loss. However, when there exist turbulent magnetic fields with scales λ_{\mathrm{B}} smaller than 2πmc^2/eB, jitter radiation can emit photons with energy higher than E_{\mathrm{c}}. The scale required for the Crab flares is about two orders of magnitude less than the wavelength of the striped wind. We discuss the model in which the flares are triggered by plunging of the high density blobs into the termination shock. The observed hard spectral shape may be explained by jitter mechanism. We make three observational predictions: firstly the polarization degree will become lower in flares, secondly, no counterpart will be seen in TeV-PeV range, and thirdly the flare spectrum will not be harder than νF_ν\propto ν^1.

17pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (5)

• Gamma-ray flares from the Crab Nebula
• Discovery of Powerful Gamma-Ray Flares from the Crab Nebula
• A Giant Sample of Giant Pulses from the Crab Pulsar
• Crab Nebula gamma-ray flares as relativistic reconnection minijets
• A statistical model for the $\gamma$-ray variability of the Crab nebula

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Simulations of particle acceleration beyond the classical synchrotron burnoff limit in magnetic reconnection: An explanation of the Crab flares
• The surprising Crab pulsar and its nebula: A review
• Pulsar-Wind Nebulae: Recent Progress in Observations and Theory
• Gamma-ray flares in the Crab Nebula: A case of relativistic reconnection?
• On the Jitter Radiation
• Crab flares due to turbulent dissipation of the pulsar striped wind
• Characterization of the Inner Knot of the Crab: The Site of the Gamma-ray Flares?
• The effect of cooling on particle trajectories and acceleration in relativistic magnetic reconnection
• General properties of the radiation spectra from relativistic electrons moving in a Langmuir turbulence
• The Crab nebula variability at short timescales with the Cherenkov Telescope Array