324 research outputs found
Milagro Search for Very High Energy Emission from Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era
The recently launched Swift satellite is providing an unprecedented number of
rapid and accurate Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) localizations, facilitating a flurry
of follow-up observations by a large number of telescopes at many different
wavelengths. The Very High Energy (VHE, >100 GeV) regime has so far been
relatively unexplored. Milagro is a wide field of view (2 sr) and high duty
cycle (> 90%) ground-based gamma-ray telescope which employs a water Cherenkov
detector to monitor the northern sky almost continuously in the 100 GeV to 100
TeV energy range. We have searched the Milagro data for emission from the most
recent GRBs identified within our field of view. These include three Swift
bursts which also display late-time X-ray flares. We have searched for emission
coincident with these flares. No significant detection was made. A 99%
confidence upper limit is provided for each of the GRBs, as well as the flares.Comment: To be published in AIP Conference Proceedings "Gamma Ray Bursts in
the Swift Era," Nov. 29 - Dec. 2, 2005, Washington, D
Gamma-ray pulsars in the Fermi LAT era
Observations over the past two years with the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have led to a tenfold increase in the number of known γ-ray pulsars. Roughly one third of this population consists of young radio-loud pulsars, one third are radio-quiet pulsars discovered in blind searches of LAT data, and one third are γ-ray millisecond pulsars (MSPs). In this paper I discuss what we have learned about these three populations, as well as prospects for further discoveries
Classification and Ranking of Fermi LAT Gamma-ray Sources from the 3FGL Catalog using Machine Learning Techniques
We apply a number of statistical and machine learning techniques to classify
and rank gamma-ray sources from the Third Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT)
Source Catalog (3FGL), according to their likelihood of falling into the two
major classes of gamma-ray emitters: pulsars (PSR) or Active Galactic Nuclei
(AGN). Using 1904 3FGL sources that have been identified/associated with AGN
(1738) and PSR (166), we train (using 70% of our sample) and test (using 30%)
our algorithms and find that the best overall accuracy (>96%) is obtained with
the Random Forest (RF) technique, while using a logistic regression (LR)
algorithm results in only marginally lower accuracy. We apply the same
techniques on a sub-sample of 142 known gamma-ray pulsars to classify them into
two major subcategories: young (YNG) and millisecond pulsars (MSP). Once more,
the RF algorithm has the best overall accuracy (~90%), while a boosted LR
analysis comes a close second. We apply our two best models (RF and LR) to the
entire 3FGL catalog, providing predictions on the likely nature of {\it
unassociated} sources, including the likely type of pulsar (YNG or MSP). We
also use our predictions to shed light on the possible nature of some gamma-ray
sources with known associations (e.g. binaries, SNR/PWN). Finally, we provide a
list of plausible X-ray counterparts for some pulsar candidates, obtained using
Swift, Chandra, and XMM. The results of our study will be of interest for both
in-depth follow-up searches (e.g. pulsar) at various wavelengths, as well as
for broader population studies.Comment: Accepted by Ap
X-ray pulsations from the radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsar in CTA 1
Prompted by the Fermi LAT discovery of a radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsar inside
the CTA 1 supernova remnant, we obtained a 130 ks XMM-Newton observation to
assess the timing behavior of this pulsar. Exploiting both the unprecedented
photon harvest and the contemporary Fermi LAT timing measurements, a 4.7 sigma
single peak pulsation is detected, making PSR J0007+7303 the second example,
after Geminga, of a radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsar also seen to pulsate in
X-rays. Phase-resolved spectroscopy shows that the off-pulse portion of the
light curve is dominated by a power-law, non-thermal spectrum, while the X-ray
peak emission appears to be mainly of thermal origin, probably from a polar cap
heated by magnetospheric return currents, pointing to a hot spot varying
throughout the pulsar rotation.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Observations of Gamma-ray Pulsars
The Large Area Telescope on the recently launched Fermi Gamma-ray Space
Telescope (formerly GLAST), with its large field of view and effective area,
combined with its excellent timing capabilities, is poised to revolutionize the
field of gamma-ray astrophysics. The large improvement in sensitivity over
EGRET is expected to result in the discovery of many new gamma-ray pulsars,
which in turn should lead to fundamental advances in our understanding of
pulsar physics and the role of neutron stars in the Galaxy. Almost immediately
after launch, Fermi clearly detected all previously known gamma-ray pulsars and
is producing high precision results on these. An extensive radio and X-ray
timing campaign of known (primarily radio) pulsars is being carried out in
order to facilitate the discovery of new gamma-ray pulsars. In addition, a
highly efficient time-differencing technique is being used to conduct blind
searches for radio-quiet pulsars, which has already resulted in new
discoveries. I present some recent results from searches for pulsars carried
out on Fermi data, both blind searches, and using contemporaneous timing of
known radio pulsars.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Science with the
New Generation of High Energy Gamma-Ray Experiments (SciNeGHE '08), held in
Padova, 8-10 October 2008, Eds. D. Bastieri, R. Rand
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