The First Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-Ray Pulsars
Abstract
The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has proved to be a remarkably powerful tool for pulsar discovery. The First Fermi LAT Pulsar Catalog (Abdo et al. 2009, ApJSS) reported the detection of gamma-ray pulsations from 46 pulsars in data from the first six months of the mission. About two thirds were discovered using timing solutions derived from monitoring radio pulsars, including both young pulsars and millisecond pulsars. The remaining third were previously unknown pulsars, discovered by searching for pulsed signals at the locations of gamma-ray sources seen with the LAT. The number of detected gamma-ray pulsars has continued to grow since then. The population of known gamma-ray pulsars is now large enough that general conclusions can be drawn about radiative emission mechanisms, pulsar birth rates, and nebular associations. We summarize the key results of the First Fermi Pulsar Catalog augmented by those subsequent discoveries.
- Publication:
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AAS/High Energy Astrophysics Division #11
- Pub Date:
- March 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010HEAD...11.1601G