Absence of TeV halos around millisecond pulsars
Abstract
TeV halos are extended very-high-energy (VHE; 0.1-100 TeV) gamma-ray emission around middle-aged pulsars. So far they have only been found around isolated pulsars, but it has been suggested that they may also be powered by millisecond pulsars (MSPs). We searched for VHE gamma-ray emission from MSPs reported by radio and GeV gamma-ray observatories in 2565 days of data from the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory. We found no significant emission from individual pulsars. By combining the likelihood profiles of all MSPs accessible to HAWC, our analysis suggests that the excess emission around the MSP population is consistent with a background. Our result suggests that MSPs are not as efficient as isolated pulsars in producing TeV halos. This finding has strong implications on the physics interpretation of the Galactic Center GeV excess and high-latitude Galactic diffuse emission.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2505.00184,
title = {Absence of TeV halos around millisecond pulsars},
author = {A. U. Abeysekara and R. Alfaro and C. Alvarez and J. C. Arteaga-Velázquez and D. Avila Rojas and H. A. Ayala Solares and R. Babu and E. Belmont-Moreno and A. Bernal and K. S. Caballero-Mora and T. Capistrán and A. Carramiñana and S. Casanova and U. Cotti and J. Cotzomi and S. Coutiño de León and E. De la Fuente and D. Depaoli and P. Desiati and N. Di Lalla and R. Diaz Hernandez and M. A. DuVernois and J. C. Díaz-Vélez and K. Engel and T. Ergin and K. L. Fan and K. Fang and N. Fraija and S. Fraija and J. A. García-González and F. Garfias and M. M. González and J. A. Goodman and J. P. Harding and S. Hernández-Cadena and D. Huang and F. Hueyotl-Zahuantitla and A. Iriarte and S. Kaufmann and D. Kieda and A. Lara and J. Lee and H. León Vargas and J. T. Linnemann and A. L. Longinotti and G. Luis-Raya and K. Malone and O. Martinez and J. Martínez-Castro and J. A. Matthews and P. Miranda-Romagnoli and J. A. Morales-Soto and E. Moreno and M. Mostafá and M. Najafi and L. Nellen and M. Newbold and M. U. Nisa and R. Noriega-Papaqui and N. Omodei and Y. Pérez Araujo and E. G. Pérez-Pérez and C. D. Rho and D. Rosa-González and E. Ruiz-Velasco and M. A. Roth and H. Salazar and A. Sandoval and J. Serna-Franco and Y. Son and R. W. Springer and O. Tibolla and K. Tollefson and I. Torres and R. Torres-Escobedo and R. Turner and F. Ureña-Mena and E. Varela and L. Villaseñor and X. Wang and Z. Wang and I. J. Watson and H. Wu and S. Yu and C. de León},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.00184},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
11 pages, 8 figures. Published as Editor's Suggestion in Phys. Rev. D, 6 February, 2025