The first year of the Fermi Large Area Telescope: a new light on the high-energy Universe

TL;DR

The Fermi Large Area Telescope's first year of operation has provided new insights into high-energy phenomena, including gamma-ray bursts, new gamma-ray sources, and cosmic-ray electron spectra, advancing high-energy astrophysics.

Contribution

This paper reports the initial results from Fermi LAT, highlighting new gamma-ray sources, the non-confirmation of previous diffuse emission excess, and detailed cosmic-ray electron measurements.

Findings

Detection of high-energy gamma-ray bursts

Discovery of new gamma-ray source populations

Measurement of cosmic-ray electron spectrum from 20 GeV to 1 TeV

Abstract

For almost one year the Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi observatory has been surveying high-energy phenomena in our Universe. We will present an overview of the status of the mission and of some results from the first year of observations, focusing on the topics of particular interest for the high-energy Physics community: detection of high-energy gamma-ray bursts, the discovery of new populations of gamma-ray sources, non-confirmation of the excess of diffuse GeV gamma-ray emission seen by EGRET and, in greater detail, the recent measurement of the cosmic-ray electron spectrum from 20 GeV to 1 TeV.