Gamma-ray Pulsar Revolution

Abstract

Isolated Neutron Stars (INSs) were the first sources identified in the field of high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. At first, in the 70s, there were only two identified sources, the Crab and Vela pulsars. However, although few in number, these objects were crucial in establishing the very concept of a gamma-ray source. Moreover, they opened up significant discovery space both in the theoretical and phenomenological fronts. The need to explain the copious gamma-ray emission of these pulsars led to breakthrough developments in understanding the structure and physics of neutron star magnetospheres. In parallel, the 20-year-long chase to understand the nature of Geminga unveiled the existence of a radio-quiet, gamma-ray-emitting, INS, adding a new dimension to the INS family. Today we are living through an extraordinary time of discovery. The current generation of gamma-ray detectors has vastly increased the population of known of gamma-ray-emitting neutron stars. The 100 mark was crossed in 2011 and we are now approaching 150. The gamma-ray-emitting neutron star population exhibits roughly equal numbers of radio-loud and radio-quiet young INSs, plus an astonishing, and unexpected, group of isolated and binary millisecond pulsars (MSPs). The number of MSPs is growing so rapidly that they are on their way to becoming the most numerous members of the family of gamma-ray-emitting Neutron Stars (NSs) . Even as these findings have set the stage for a revolution in our understanding of gamma-ray-emitting neutron stars, long term monitoring of the gamma-ray sky has revealed evidence of flux variability in the Crab Nebula as well as in the pulsed emission from PSR J2021+4026, challenging a four-decade-old, constant-emission paradigm. Now we know that both pulsars and their nebulae can, indeed, display variable emission.

55 pages, 13 figures, 3 tables Accepted for publication

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Cited by in corpus (54)

• Masses, Radii, and Equation of State of Neutron Stars
• Millisecond pulsars and the Galactic Center gamma-ray excess: the importance of luminosity function and secondary emission
• Frontiers in Nuclear Astrophysics
• Space- and Ground-Based Gamma-Ray Astrophysics
• Fast Rotating Neutron Stars with Realistic Nuclear Matter Equation of State
• Gamma-ray pulsars: a gold mine
• Detection of the Geminga pulsar with MAGIC hints at a power-law tail emission beyond 15 GeV
• Known Pulsars Identified in the GMRT 150 MHz All-Sky Survey
• Bayesian Model Comparison and Analysis of the Galactic Disk Population of Gamma-Ray Millisecond Pulsars
• A broadband X-ray study of the Geminga pulsar with NuSTAR and XMM-Newton
• An image-based search for pulsars among Fermi unassociated LAT sources
• Six New Millisecond Pulsars from Arecibo Searches of Fermi Gamma-Ray Sources
• Radio-quiet and radio-loud pulsars: similar in Gamma-rays but different in X-rays
• Detection and timing of gamma-ray pulsations from the $707$ Hz pulsar J0952$-$0607
• Physics and astrophysics of strong magnetic field systems with eXTP
• Inferring the composition of super-Jupiter mass companions of pulsars with radio line spectroscopy
• Exploiting Orbital Constraints from Optical Data to Detect Binary Gamma-ray Pulsars
• Optical Transients Powered by Magnetars: Dynamics, Light Curves, and Transition to the Nebular Phase
• Thermal Emission and Radioactive Lines, but No Pulsar, in the Broadband X-Ray Spectrum of Supernova 1987A
• PSR J1906+0722: An Elusive Gamma-ray Pulsar
• Optimized Blind Gamma-ray Pulsar Searches at Fixed Computing Budget
• Magnetospheres of black hole-neutron star binaries
• On the puzzling high-energy pulsations of the energetic radio-quiet $\gamma$-ray pulsar J1813$-$1246
• Pulsar revival in neutron star mergers: multi-messenger prospects for the discovery of pre-merger coherent radio emission
• Milky Way globular clusters in gamma-rays: analyzing the dynamical formation of millisecond pulsars
• A Search for Pulsations from Geminga Above 100 GeV with VERITAS
• Pulsar Candidates Toward Fermi Unassociated Sources
• Can a bright and energetic X-ray pulsar be hiding amid the debris of SN 1987A?
• On the Magnetic Field of Pulsars with Realistic Neutron Stars Configurations
• Thermal and non-thermal X-ray emission from the rotation-powered radio/$\gamma$-ray pulsar PSR J1740+1000
• X-ray bounds on the r-mode amplitude in millisecond pulsars
• Introduction to multi-messenger astronomy
• Fermi Study of gamma-ray Millisecond Pulsars: the Spectral Shape and Pulsed 25--200 GeV Emission from J0614-3329
• Observations of three young gamma-ray pulsars with the Gran Telescopio Canarias
• Gamma-ray flux limits from brown dwarfs: Implications for dark matter annihilating into long-lived mediators
• Analytic properties of electromagnetic field of binary compact stars and electromagnetic precursors to gravitational waves
• Search for multiwavelength emission from the binary millisecond pulsar PSR J1836-2354A in the globular cluster M22
• Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
• A Search for Pulsed Very High-Energy Gamma Rays from Thirteen Young Pulsars in Archival VERITAS Data
• Search for continuous gravitational waves from HESS~J1427-608 with a hidden Markov model
• Search for differences between radio-loud and radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsar populations with Fermi-LAT data
• How the dynamical properties of globular clusters impact their $\gamma$-ray and X-ray emission
• Detection of radio emission from the gamma-ray pulsar J1732-3131 at 327 MHz
• Searching for the optical counterparts of two young gamma-ray pulsars
• Observations of one young and three middle-aged $\gamma$-ray pulsars with the Gran Telescopio Canarias
• Investigation of the Millisecond Pulsar Origins by their Spin Periods at the Wavebands of Radio, X-Ray, and γ-Ray
• One of Everything: The Breakthrough Listen Exotica Catalog
• AstroSat-CZTI as a hard X-ray Pulsar Monitor
• Prediction of radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsar distances using the Fundamental Plane relation
• Glitches in four gamma-ray pulsars and inferences on the neutron star structure
• The Potential for Hadronic Particle Acceleration in Galactic Pulsar Wind Nebulae
• Gamma-radiation sky maps from compact binaries
• Pair Production Detectors for Gamma-ray Astrophysics
• Deepening gamma-ray point-source catalogues with sub-threshold information