A search of the SAS-2 data for pulsed gamma-ray emission from radio pulsars

Abstract

Data from the SAS-2 high energy gamma ray experiment were examined for pulsed emission from each of 75 radio pulsars which were viewed by the instrument and which have sufficiently well defined period and period derivative information from radio observations to allow for gamma ray periodicity searches. When gamma ray arrival times were converted to pulsar phase using the radio reference timing information, two pulsars, PSR 1747-46 and PSR 1818-04, showed positive effects, each with a probability less than 0.0001 of being a random fluctuation in the data for that pulsar. These are in addition to PSR 0531+21 and PSR 0833-45, previously reported. The results of this study suggest that gamma-ray astronomy has reached the detection threshold for gamma ray pulsars and that work in the near future should give important information on the nature of pulsars