Constraining the slow-diffusion zone size and electron injection spectral index for the Geminga pulsar halo
Abstract
Measuring the electron diffusion coefficient is the most straightforward task in the study of gamma-ray pulsar halos. The updated measurements of the spatial morphology and spectrum of the Geminga halo by the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) experiment enable us to constrain parameters beyond the diffusion coefficient, including the size of the slow-diffusion zone and the electron injection spectrum from the pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe). Based on the two-zone diffusion model, we find that the slow-diffusion zone size () around Geminga is within the range of ~pc. The lower boundary of this range is determined by the goodness of fit of the model to the one-dimensional morphology of the Geminga halo. The upper limit is derived from fitting the gamma-ray spectrum of the Geminga halo, along with the expectations for the power-law index of the injection spectrum based on simulations and PWNe observations, i.e., . With set at its lower limit of ~pc, we obtain the maximum permitted by the HAWC spectrum measurement, with an upper limit of at a significance. Moreover, we find that when ~pc and , the predicted positron spectrum generated by Geminga at Earth coincides with the AMS-02 measurement in the ~GeV range.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2310.16594,
title = {Constraining the slow-diffusion zone size and electron injection spectral index for the Geminga pulsar halo},
author = {Kun Fang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.16594},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
15 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in PRD