Pulsar Prospects for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) to detect gamma-ray pulsars, building on recent discoveries by Fermi-LAT and ground-based telescopes like MAGIC and VERITAS, and extrapolating pulsar spectra to VHE energies.

Contribution

It presents a study on CTA's capabilities to detect pulsars by extrapolating their spectra based on recent VHE observations, offering new prospects for ground-based pulsar detection.

Findings

CTA can potentially detect multiple Fermi pulsars at VHE energies.

Extrapolated spectra suggest detectable signals up to hundreds of GeV.

Results challenge existing models and suggest new observational strategies.

Abstract

In the last few years, the Fermi-LAT telescope has discovered over a 100 pulsars at energies above 100 MeV, increasing the number of known gamma-ray pulsars by an order of magnitude. In parallel, imaging Cherenkov telescopes, such as MAGIC and VERITAS, have detected for the first time VHE pulsed gamma-rays from the Crab pulsar. Such detections have revealed that the Crab VHE spectrum follows a power-law up to at least 400 GeV, challenging most theoretical models, and opening wide possibilities of detecting more pulsars from the ground with the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). In this contribution, we study the capabilities of CTA for detecting Fermi pulsars. For this, we extrapolate their spectra with "Crab-like" power-law tails in the VHE range, as suggested by the latest MAGIC and VERITAS results.