Observations and Modeling of Gamma-ray Millisecond Pulsars seen with the Fermi LAT

TL;DR

This paper analyzes gamma-ray millisecond pulsars observed with Fermi LAT, modeling their light curves with geometric emission models to infer system geometries, providing insights into pulsar emission mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a method to model radio and gamma-ray light curves of MSPs using retarded vacuum dipole fields and likelihood fitting, offering new geometric constraints.

Findings

Model-dependent confidence contours for pulsar viewing geometries.

Complementary insights to polarization measurements.

Enhanced understanding of gamma-ray emission regions.

Abstract

We present a summary of gamma-ray millisecond pulsar (MSP) observations with the Fermi Large Area Telescope. The radio and gamma-ray light curves of these MSPs have been modeled in the framework of the retarded vacuum dipole magnetic field. Likelihood fitting of the radio and gamma-ray light curves with geometric emission models allows us to give model-dependent confidence contours for the viewing geometry in these systems which are complementary to those from polarization measurements.