Six years of VERITAS observations of the Crab Nebula

Abstract

The Crab Nebula is the brightest source in the very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray sky and one of the best studied non-thermal objects. The dominant VHE emission mechanism is believed to be inverse Compton scattering of low energy photons on relativistic electrons. While it is unclear how the electrons in the nebula are accelerated to energies of $10^{16}$ eV, it is general consensus that the ultimate source of energy is the Crab pulsar at the center of the nebula. Studying VHE gamma-ray emission provides valuable insight into the emission mechanisms and ultimately helps to understand the remaining mysteries of the Crab, for example, how the Poynting dominated energy flow is converted into a particle dominated flow of energy. We report on the results of six years of Crab observations with VERITAS comprising 115 hours of data taken between 2007 and 2013. VERITAS is an array of four 12-meter imaging air Cherenkov telescopes located in southern Arizona. We report on the energy spectrum, light curve, and a study of the VHE extension of the Crab Nebula.

8 pages, 5 figures, To appear in Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference

Cited by in corpus (13)

• The First LHAASO Catalog of Gamma-Ray Sources
• Using Interstellar Clouds to Search for Galactic PeVatrons: Gamma-ray Signatures from Supernova Remnants
• Phenomenological modelling of the Crab Nebula's broad band energy spectrum and its apparent extension
• Particle acceleration model for the broadband baseline spectrum of the Crab nebula
• Prospects for the characterization of the VHE emission from the Crab Nebula and Pulsar with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• VHE Gamma-ray Observation of Crab Nebula with HAGAR Telescope Array
• The Crab nebula variability at short timescales with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Science Highlights from VERITAS
• Gamma-ray detector and mission design simulations
• A new method of reconstructing images of gamma-ray telescopes applied to the LST-1 of CTAO
• Observation of the Crab Nebula with the Single-Mirror Small-Size Telescope stereoscopic system at low altitude
• A novel energy reconstruction method for the MAGIC stereoscopic observation
• A unified model for the time variability of the Crab: the dispersion measure variation and the $\gamma$-ray flare of the nebula