Detection of the Geminga pulsar with MAGIC hints at a power-law tail emission beyond 15 GeV
We report the detection of pulsed gamma-ray emission from the Geminga pulsar (PSR J0633+1746) between 15 GeV and 75 GeV. This is the first time a middle-aged pulsar has been detected up to these energies. Observations were carried out with the MAGIC telescopes between 2017 and 2019 using the low-ene...
| Autores: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2020 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) |
| Repositorio: | Docta Complutense |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/8258 |
| Acesso em linha: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/8258 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | 539.1 Gamma-ray pulsars Major upgrade X-ray Telescopes Radiation Parallax Física nuclear 2207 Física Atómica y Nuclear |
| Resumo: | We report the detection of pulsed gamma-ray emission from the Geminga pulsar (PSR J0633+1746) between 15 GeV and 75 GeV. This is the first time a middle-aged pulsar has been detected up to these energies. Observations were carried out with the MAGIC telescopes between 2017 and 2019 using the low-energy threshold Sum-Trigger-II system. After quality selection cuts, similar to 80 h of observational data were used for this analysis. To compare with the emission at lower energies below the sensitivity range of MAGIC, 11 years of Fermi-LAT data above 100 MeV were also analysed. From the two pulses per rotation seen by Fermi-LAT, only the second one, P2, is detected in the MAGIC energy range, with a significance of 6.3 sigma. The spectrum measured by MAGIC is well-represented by a simple power law of spectral index Gamma =5.62 +/- 0.54, which smoothly extends the Fermi-LAT spectrum. A joint fit to MAGIC and Fermi-LAT data rules out the existence of a sub-exponential cut-off in the combined energy range at the 3.6 sigma significance level. The power-law tail emission detected by MAGIC is interpreted as the transition from curvature radiation to Inverse Compton Scattering of particles accelerated in the northern outer gap. |
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