Related papers: Gamma-ray pulsars: a gold mine
In 8 years of operation, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi satellite has impacted our understanding of gamma-ray pulsars dramatically. The LAT now sees over two hundred pulsars: the largest class of GeV sources in the Milky Way.…
In a strong magnetic field, B > 4x10^{12} G, gamma-rays emitted nearly along curved field lines adiabatically convert into bound electron-positron pairs (positronium atoms) rather that decaying into free pairs. This process may modify the…
Gamma rays from young pulsars and milli-second pulsars are expected to contribute to the diffuse gamma-ray emission measured by the {\it Fermi} Large Area Telescope (LAT) at high latitudes. We derive the contribution of the pulsars…
Rotation-powered pulsars represent the main class of identified gamma-ray sources in the Galaxy. The wealth of observational data collected by the AGILE and Fermi gamma-ray space telescopes in the GeV range, and by ground-based Cherenkov…
A new mechanism of particle acceleration to ultra high energies, driven by the rotational slow down of a pulsar (Crab pulsar, for example), is explored. The rotation, through the time dependent centrifugal force, can very efficiently excite…
Gamma-Ray Bursts are the most energetic explosions in the Universe, and are among the most promising for detecting multiple non-electromagnetic signals, including cosmic rays, high energy neutrinos and gravitational waves. The multi-GeV to…
Blazars are high-energy engines providing us natural laboratories to study particle acceleration, relativistic plasma processes, magnetic field dynamics, black hole physics. Key informations are provided by observations at high-energy (in…
The detection, in 1998, of the first Accreting Millisecond Pulsar, started an exciting season of continuing discoveries in the fashinating field of compact binary systems harbouring a neutron star. Indeed, in these last three lustres,…
The most strongly magnetized neutron stars, the magnetars, have spectacular outbursts of gamma-ray flares powered by decay of the magnetic field. The rapidly changing field is strong enough that it should be able to stress and rupture the…
Anomalous x-ray pulsars (AXPs) are thought to be magnetars which are young isolated neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields of > 10^14Gauss. Their tremendous magnetic fields inferred from the spin parameters provide a huge…
It is expected that specific globular clusters can contain up to a hundred of millisecond pulsars. These pulsars can accelerate leptons at the shock waves originated in collisions of the pulsar winds and/or inside the pulsar magnetospheres.…
It has been suggested that some classes of luminous supernovae (SNe) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are driven by newborn magnetars. Fast-rotating proto-neutron stars have also been of interest as potential sources of gravitational waves…
Observations of short gamma-ray bursts indicate ongoing energy injection following the prompt emission, with the most likely candidate being the birth of a rapidly rotating, highly magnetised neutron star. We utilise X-ray observations of…
The origin of the pulsed gamma-ray emission in pulsars remains an open issue. The combination of sensitive observations in the GeV domain by AGILE and {\em Fermi}-LAT and increasingly sophisticated numerical simulations have recently…
Recent gamma-ray observations have detected photons up to energies of a few PeV. These highly energetic gamma rays are emitted by the most powerful sources in the Galaxy. Propagating over astrophysical distances, gamma rays might interact…
The high-energy sources known as anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) and soft gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) are well explained as magnetars: isolated neutron stars powered by their own magnetic energy. After explaining why it is generally believed…
Confronting theoretical models with observations of thermal radiation emitted by neutron stars is one of the most important ways to understand the properties of both, superdense matter in the interiors of the neutron stars and dense…
Fast radio bursts are mysterious millisecond-duration transients prevalent in the radio sky. Rapid accumulation of data in recent years has facilitated an understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms of these events. Knowledge gained…
Magnetars are neutron stars with superstrong magnetic fields which can exceed 1e15 G. Some magnetars (the so-called soft gamma-repeaters) demonstrate occasionally very powerful processes of energy release, which result in exceptionally…
We investigate the electrodynamic structure of a pulsar outer-magnetospheric particle accelerator and the resultant gamma-ray emission. By considering the condition for the accelerator to be self-sustained, we derive how the…