Detection of bridge emission above 50 GeV from the Crab pulsar with the MAGIC telescopes

Abstract

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.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• TEMPO2, a new pulsar timing package. I: Overview
• Observation of Pulsed Gamma-rays Above 25 GeV from the Crab Pulsar with MAGIC
• High-Altitude Emission from Pulsar Slot Gaps: The Crab Pulsar
• Particle Acceleration and Non-Thermal Emission in Pulsar Outer Magnetospheric Gap

Cited by in corpus (20)

• Teraelectronvolt pulsed emission from the Crab pulsar detected by MAGIC
• The soft gamma-ray pulsar population: an high-energy overview
• Constraining Lorentz invariance violation using the Crab Pulsar emission observed up to TeV energies by MAGIC
• First Ground-based Measurement of Sub-20 GeV to 100 GeV $\gamma$-rays from the Vela Pulsar with H.E.S.S. II
• Very high energy emission as a probe of relativistic magnetic reconnection in pulsar winds
• Fermi-LAT Detection of Pulsed Gamma-rays Above 50 GeV from the Vela Pulsar
• Three-dimensional non-vacuum pulsar outer-gap model: Localized acceleration electric field in the higher altitudes
• Search for VHE gamma-ray emission from Geminga pulsar and nebula with the MAGIC telescopes
• Probing gamma-ray emissions of Fermi-LAT pulsars with a non-stationary outer gap model
• Modeling of the gamma-ray pulsed spectra of Geminga, Crab, and Vela with synchro-curvature radiation
• Observing and modeling the gamma-ray emission from pulsar/pulsar wind nebula complex PSR J0205+6449/3C 58
• Gamma-ray emission from PSR J0007+7303 using 7 years of Fermi Large Area Telescope observations
• X-ray/GeV emissions from Crab-like pulsars in LMC
• Galactic and Extragalactic Sources of Very High Energy Gamma-rays
• Prospects for the detection of high-energy (E>25 GeV) Fermi pulsars with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Pulsar striped winds
• Statistics of VHE gamma-Rays in Temporal Association with Radio Giant Pulses from the Crab Pulsar
• Simulated Gamma-Ray Pulse Profile of the Crab Pulsar with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• A mechanism-independent methodology for modeling γ-ray phaseograms of pulsars in the framework of north-south symmetry
• The Major Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes (MAGIC)