Observing peculiar gamma-ray pulsars with AGILE

TL;DR

The AGILE satellite's gamma-ray observations have advanced pulsar studies by detecting numerous pulsars, unveiling new high-energy features, and identifying gamma-ray emission from pulsar glitches and nebulae, especially for energetic and millisecond pulsars.

Contribution

This paper presents the first extensive gamma-ray pulsar observations with AGILE, revealing new features and confirming pulsar identifications, especially for high-energy and millisecond pulsars.

Findings

Detected about 20 gamma-ray pulsars with high confidence.

Unveiled sub-millisecond features in pulsar light-curves.

Identified gamma-ray emission from pulsar glitches and nebulae.

Abstract

The AGILE gamma-ray satellite provides large sky exposure levels ($\geq 10^9$ cm$^2$ s per year on the Galactic Plane) with sensitivity peaking at $E\sim$100 MeV where the bulk of pulsar energy output is typically released. Its $\sim$1 $\mu$s absolute time tagging capability makes it perfectly suited for the study of gamma-ray pulsars. AGILE collected a large number of gamma-ray photons from EGRET pulsars ($\geq$40,000 pulsed counts for Vela) in two years of observations unveiling new interesting features at sub-millisecond level in the pulsars' high-energy light-curves, gamma-ray emission from pulsar glitches and Pulsar Wind Nebulae. AGILE detected about 20 nearby and energetic pulsars with good confidence through timing and/or spatial analysis. Among the newcomers we find pulsars with very high rotational energy losses, such as the remarkable PSR B1509--58 with a magnetic field in excess of 10$^{13}$ Gauss, and PSR J2229+6114 providing a reliable identification for the previously unidentified EGRET source 3EG 2227+6122. Moreover, the powerful millisecond pulsar B1821--24, in the globular cluster M28, is detected during a fraction of the observations.