Related papers: Gamma-ray pulsars: a gold mine
Recent measurements of gamma rays from the powerful quasar 3C273 by the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory show that a powerful cosmic accelerator must be operating. In this paper the evidence for proton acceleration is collected with the result…
In the very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray wave band, pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) represent to date the most populous class of Galactic sources. Nevertheless, the details of the energy conversion mechanisms in the vicinity of pulsars are not…
The launch of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has heralded a new era in the study of gamma-ray pulsars. The population of confirmed gamma-ray pulsars has gone from 6-7 to more than 60, and the superb sensitivity of the Large Area…
In the past few years gamma-ray astronomy has entered a golden age. A modern suite of telescopes is now scanning the sky over both hemispheres and over six orders of magnitude in energy. At $\sim$TeV energies, only a handful of sources were…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are sources of energetic, highly variable fluxes of gamma rays, which demonstrates that they are powerful particle accelerators. Besides relativistic electrons, GRBs should also accelerate high-energy hadrons, some…
2009 has been an extraordinary year for gamma-ray pulsar astronomy and 2010 promises to be equally good. Not only have we registered an extraordinary increase in the number of pulsars detected in gamma rays, but we have also witnessed the…
X-ray binaries are composed of a normal star in orbit around a neutron star or stellar-mass black hole. Radio and X-ray observations have led to the presumption that some X-ray binaries called microquasars behave as scaled down active…
The $\gamma$-ray emission observed in several classes of Galactic and extragalactic astrophysical sources appears to be linked to accreting black holes and rotational powered neutron stars. These systems are prodigious cosmic accelerators,…
Our knowledge of the high-energy universe is undergoing a period of rapid change as new astronomical detectors of high-energy radiation start to operate at their design sensitivities. Now is a boomtime for high-energy astrophysics, with new…
With Teragauss magnetic fields, surface gravity sufficiently strong to significantly modify light paths, central densities higher than that of a standard nucleus, and rotation periods of only hundredths of a second, young neutron stars are…
Gamma-ray observations have established energetic isolated pulsars as outstanding particle accelerators and antimatter factories in the Galaxy. There is, however, no consensus regarding the acceleration mechanisms and the radiative…
The Large Area Telescope (LAT), Fermi's main instrument, is providing a new view of the local energetic pulsar population. In addition to identifying a pulsar origin of a large fraction of the bright unidentified Galactic EGRET sources, the…
We introduce neutrino astronomy starting from the observational fact that Nature accelerates protons and photons to energies in excess of 10^{20} and 10^{13} eV, respectively. Although the discovery of cosmic rays dates back a century, we…
As a result of recent observations with ROSAT and ASCA the number of rotation-powered pulsars seen at X-ray energies has increased substantially. In this paper we review the phenomenology of the observed X-ray emission properties. At…
A new model for the high-energy emission from pulsars is developed by considering charged particle motion in the fields of a spinning, highly magnetised and conducting sphere in vacuum. A generally applicable approximation to the particle…
Astrophysical gamma-ray spectroscopy is a most valuable tool for studying nuclear astrophysics, as well as recent star formation in the Milky Way. After a short, historical, introduction to the field, I present a brief review of the most…
Millisecond pulsars represent an evolutionarily distinct group among rotation-powered pulsars. Outside the radio band, the soft X-ray range ($\sim 0.1$--10 keV) is most suitable for studying radiative mechanisms operating in these…
We introduce neutrino astronomy from the observational fact that Nature accelerates protons and photons to energies in excess of 10^{20} and 10^{13} eV, respectively. Although the discovery of cosmic rays dates back close to a century, we…
Neutron stars emitting continuous gravitational waves may be regarded as gravitational pulsars, in the sense that it could be possible to track the evolution of their rotational period with long-baseline observations of next-generation…
Neutron Stars are among the most exotic objects in the Universe. A neutron star, with a mass of 1.4-2 Solar masses within a radius of about 10-15 km, is the most compact stable configuration of matter in which degeneracy pressure can still…