Fermi-LAT Results on Pulsar Wind Nebulae after 1.5 year of Observations

Abstract

AbstractPrior to the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, only six pulsars and one associated pulsar wind nebula, the Crab Nebula, had been detected in γ-rays by EGRET. Since then, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard Fermi has significantly increased the number of detected pulsars in the 100 MeV to 30 GeV energy range. The new pulsar population established by early LAT observations show that we are detecting many nearby young pulsars in addition to the population of millisecond pulsars. All Fermi-LAT pulsars have high energy loss rate (Ė), from ~ 3 × 1033 erg s-1 to 5 × 1038 erg s-1. A large fraction of these pulsars are associated to pulsar wind nebulae candidates observed in the TeV energy range by Cherenkov telescopes. These pulsars are thus likely to power a PWN detectable by Fermi, as it has already been done for the Crab. Here, we will review the results obtained so far by Fermi-LAT after 1.5 year of observations.KeywordsSpectral Energy DistributionCrab NebulaLarge Area TelescopeCrab PulsarInverse ComptonThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.