A stacked analysis of 115 pulsars observed by the Fermi LAT

TL;DR

This study performs a combined analysis of 115 gamma-ray pulsars observed by Fermi-LAT to search for high-energy emission above 50 GeV, finding no significant collective excess and setting upper limits on their flux.

Contribution

It introduces a stacked analysis method for multiple pulsars at very high energies, providing the first ensemble constraints on their gamma-ray emission above 50 GeV.

Findings

No significant excess detected above 50 GeV in the combined pulsar sample.

The average flux from 115 pulsars is constrained to less than 30% of the Crab pulsar flux in 100-177 GeV.

Stacked analysis of sub-samples also shows no significant high-energy emission.

Abstract

Due to the low gamma-ray fluxes from pulsars above 50 GeV and the small collecting area of space-based telescopes, the gamma-ray emission discovered by the Fermi-LAT in $\sim$150 pulsars is largely unexplored at these energies. In this regime, the uncertainties on the spectral data points and/or the constraints from upper-limits are not sufficient to provide robust tests of competing emission models in individual pulsars. The discovery of power-law-type emission from the Crab pulsar at energies exceeding 100 GeV provides a compelling justification for exploration of other pulsars at these energies. We applied the method of Aperture Photometry to measure pulsar emission spectra from Fermi-LAT data and present a stacked analysis of 115 pulsars selected from the Second Fermi-LAT Catalog of Gamma-ray Pulsars. This analysis, which uses an average of $\sim$4.2 years of data per pulsar, aggregates low-level emission which cannot be resolved in individual objects but can be detected in an ensemble. We find no significant stacked excess at energies above 50 GeV. An upper limit of $\sim$30% of the Crab pulsar level is found for the average flux from 115 pulsars in the 100-177 GeV energy range at the 95% confidence level. Stacked searches exclusive to the young pulsar sample, the millisecond pulsar sample, and several other promising sub-samples also return no significant excesses above 50 GeV.