Synchrotron Self-Compton Emission from the Crab and Other Pulsars

Abstract

Results of a simulation of synchrotron-self Compton (SSC) emission from a rotation-powered pulsar are presented. The radiating particles are assumed to be both accelerated primary electrons and a spectrum of electron-positron pairs produced in cascades near the polar cap. They follow trajectories in a slot gap using 3D force-free magnetic field geometry, gaining pitch angles through resonant cyclotron absorption of radio photons, radiating and scattering synchrotron emission at high altitudes out to and beyond the light cylinder. Full angular dependence of the synchrotron photon density is simulated in the scattering and all processes are treated in the inertial observer frame. Spectra for the Crab and Vela pulsars as well as two energetic millisecond pulsars, B1821-24 and B1937+21 are simulated using this model. The simulation of the Crab pulsar radiation can reproduce both the flux level and the shape of the observed optical to hard X-ray emission assuming a pair multiplicity of $M_{+}=3\times 10^5$, as well as the very-high-energy emission above 50 GeV detected by MAGIC and VERITAS, with both the synchrotron and SSC components reflecting the shape of the pair spectrum. Simulations of Vela, B1821$-$24 and B1937+21, for $M_{+}$ up to $10^5$, do not produce pair SSC emission that is detectable by current telescopes, indicating that only Crab-like pulsars produce significant SSC components. The pair synchrotron emission matches the observed X-ray spectrum of the millisecond pulsars and the predicted peak of this emission at 1 - 10 MeV would be detectable with planned Compton telescopes.

35 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (16)

• Observation of Pulsed Gamma-rays Above 25 GeV from the Crab Pulsar with MAGIC
• Time-dependent pair cascades in magnetospheres of neutron stars I. Dynamics of the polar cap cascade with no particle supply from the neutron star surface
• High-Altitude Emission from Pulsar Slot Gaps: The Crab Pulsar
• On the polar cap cascade pair multiplicity of young pulsars
• Fermi LAT Observations of the Vela Pulsar
• Constraints on the Emission Geometries and Spin Evolution of Gamma-ray Millisecond Pulsars
• Particle Accelerator in Pulsar Magnetospheres: Super Goldreich-Julian Current with Ion Emission from the Neutron Star Surface
• Radio-to-TeV Phase-resolved Emission from the Crab Pulsar: The Annular Gap Model
• Testing dissipative magnetosphere model light curves and spectra with FERMI pulsars
• 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
• A broadband radio study of the average profile and giant pulses from PSR B1821-24A
• A stacked analysis of 115 pulsars observed by the Fermi LAT
• A Search for Pulsations from Geminga Above 100 GeV with VERITAS
• High-Energy Emission of the First Millisecond Pulsar
• Strong-Field Electrodynamics

Cited by in corpus (35)

• Science with e-ASTROGAM (A space mission for MeV-GeV gamma-ray astrophysics)
• Teraelectronvolt pulsed emission from the Crab pulsar detected by MAGIC
• 3D Kinetic Pulsar Magnetosphere Models: Connecting to Gamma-Ray Observations
• Effects of synchrotron cooling and pair production on collisionless relativistic reconnection
• First Ground-based Measurement of Sub-20 GeV to 100 GeV $\gamma$-rays from the Vela Pulsar with H.E.S.S. II
• Multiwavelength Polarization of Rotation-Powered Pulsars
• Multi-TeV Emission From the Vela Pulsar
• Very-High-Energy Emission From Pulsars
• 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
• Opacities for Photon Splitting and Pair Creation in Neutron Star Magnetospheres
• Repeated state change of variable gamma-ray pulsar, PSR J2021+4026
• The Emission Physics of Millisecond Pulsars
• Pulsed VHE emission from the Crab Pulsar in the context of magnetocentrifugal particle acceleration
• Probing the High-energy $\gamma$-ray Emission Mechanism in the Vela Pulsar via Phase-resolved Spectral and Energy-dependent Light Curve Modeling
• Fermi Study of gamma-ray Millisecond Pulsars: the Spectral Shape and Pulsed 25--200 GeV Emission from J0614-3329
• X-ray/GeV emissions from Crab-like pulsars in LMC
• Intensity and Polarization Characteristics of Extended Neutron Star Surface Regions
• Studying the SGR 1806-20/Cl* 1806-20 region using the \emph{Fermi} Large Area Telescope
• A NICER View on the 2020 Magnetar-Like Outburst of PSR J1846-0258
• X-ray study of Variable Gamma-ray Pulsar PSR J2021+4026
• Probing the pulsar population of Terzan 5 via spectral modeling
• A Search for Pulsed Very High-Energy Gamma Rays from Thirteen Young Pulsars in Archival VERITAS Data
• Pulsar striped winds
• Exploring the energy-dependent radiation properties in dissipative magnetospheres with Fermi pulsars
• The power-law component of the X-ray emissions from pulsar wind nebulae and their pulsars
• A NICER View of Spectral and Profile Evolution for Three X-ray Emitting Millisecond Pulsars
• Frequency resolved radio and high-energy emission of pulsars
• Search for Very High-Energy Emission from the millisecond pulsar PSR J0218+4232
• Physics of radio emission in gamma-ray pulsars
• Two-fluid model of the pulsar magnetosphere represented as an axisymmetric force-free dipole
• Modelling energy-dependent pulsar light curves
• The pulsar gamma-ray emission from the high-resolution dissipative magnetospheres
• Towards Modelling AR Sco: Calibration -- Reproducing High-Energy Pulsar Emission and Testing Convergence to Aristotelian Electrodynamics
• Pulsar emission in the very-high-energy regime