High-Resolution Timing Observations of Spin-Powered Pulsars with the AGILE Gamma-Ray Telescope
Abstract
AGILE is a small gamma-ray astronomy satellite mission of the Italian Space Agency dedicated to high-energy astrophysics launched in 2007 April. Its 1 microsecond absolute time tagging capability coupled with a good sensitivity in the 30 MeV-30 GeV range, with simultaneous X-ray monitoring in the 18-60 keV band, makes it perfectly suited for the study of gamma-ray pulsars following up on the CGRO/EGRET heritage. In this paper we present the first AGILE timing results on the known gamma-ray pulsars Vela, Crab, Geminga and B 1706-44. The data were collected from 2007 July to 2008 April, exploiting the mission Science Verification Phase, the Instrument Timing Calibration and the early Observing Pointing Program. Thanks to its large field of view, AGILE collected a large number of gamma-ray photons from these pulsars (about 10,000 pulsed counts for Vela) in only few months of observations. The coupling of AGILE timing capabilities, simultaneous radio/X-ray monitoring and new tools aimed at precise photon phasing, exploiting also timing noise correction, unveiled new interesting features at sub-millisecond level in the pulsars' high-energy light-curves.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0810.1516,
title = {High-Resolution Timing Observations of Spin-Powered Pulsars with the AGILE Gamma-Ray Telescope},
author = {A. Pellizzoni and M. Pilia and A. Possenti and F. Fornari and P. Caraveo and E. Del Monte and S. Mereghetti and M. Tavani and A. Argan and A. Trois and M. Burgay and A. Chen and I. Cognard and E. Costa and N. D'Amico and P. Esposito and Y. Evangelista and M. Feroci and F. Fuschino and A. Giuliani and J. Halpern and G. Hobbs and A. Hotan and S. Johnston and M. Kramer and F. Longo and R. N. Manchester and M. Marisaldi and J. Palfreyman and P. Weltevrede and G. Barbiellini and F. Boffelli and A. Bulgarelli and P. W. Cattaneo and V. Cocco and F. D'Ammando and G. De Paris and G. Di Cocco and I. Donnarumma and M. Fiorini and T. Froysland and M. Galli and F. Gianotti and A. Harding and C. Labanti and I. Lapshov and F. Lazzarotto and P. Lipari and F. Mauri and A. Morselli and L. Pacciani and F. Perotti and P. Picozza and M. Prest and G. Pucella and M. Rapisarda and A. Rappoldi and P. Soffitta and M. Trifoglio and E. Vallazza and S. Vercellone and V. Vittorini and A. Zambra and D. Zanello and C. Pittori and F. Verrecchia and B. Preger and P. Santolamazza and P. Giommi and L. Salotti},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0810.1516},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. 14 pages in emulate-apj style, 2 tables, 9 figures (1 color). Replacement corrected Figure 6