Pulsar Results with the Fermi Large Area Telescope

TL;DR

The Fermi Large Area Telescope has significantly advanced gamma-ray pulsar research by discovering over 60 pulsars, including many radio-quiet and millisecond pulsars, enhancing understanding of their emission and population.

Contribution

This paper reports the discovery of numerous gamma-ray pulsars with Fermi LAT, including radio-quiet and millisecond pulsars, and discusses their spectral, timing, and multi-wavelength properties.

Findings

Over 60 gamma-ray pulsars confirmed, including 24 discovered in blind searches.

Majority of these pulsars are radio-quiet despite deep follow-up.

Millisecond pulsars confirmed as gamma-ray emitters, both individually and in clusters.

Abstract

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 Telescope (LAT) on Fermi has allowed the detailed study of their spectra and light curves. Twenty-four of these pulsars were discovered in blind searches of the gamma-ray data, and twenty-one of these are, at present, radio quiet, despite deep radio follow-up observations. In addition, millisecond pulsars have been confirmed as a class of gamma-ray emitters, both individually and collectively in globular clusters. Recently, radio searches in the direction of LAT sources with no likely counterparts have been highly productive, leading to the discovery of a large number of new millisecond pulsars. Taken together, these discoveries promise a great improvement in the understanding of the gamma-ray emission properties and Galactic population of pulsars. We summarize some of the results stemming from these newly-detected pulsars and their timing and multi-wavelength follow-up observations.