Unraveling the emission geometry of the Fermi millisecond pulsars
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Date
Authors
Venter, C.
Harding, A.K.
Guillemot, L.
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Volume Title
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Fermi
Abstract
The nine millisecond pulsars (MSPs) that have now been detected by Fermi-LAT are providing
an excellent opportunity to probe the emission geometry of these ancient compact objects. As they
are radio-loud, one may use the relative phase lags across wavebands to obtain constraints on the
orientation, size, and location of their radio and gamma-ray beams. We model the gamma-ray
light curves using geometric outer gap (OG) and two-pole caustic (TPC) models, in addition to a
pair-starved polar cap (PSPC) model which incorporates the full General Relativistic E-field. We
find that most MSP light curves are fit by OG and TPC models, while PSPC is more appropriate
for two others. The light curves of the newest discovery, PSR J0034−0534, are best modeled using
outer magnetosphere OG / TPC models of limited extension for both radio and gamma-ray beams.
We model the radio emission of the other eight MSPs using a fixed-altitude conal model at lower
altitude. We lastly deduce values for inclination and observer angles (α and ζ), as well as the flux
correction factor, in each case
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Citation
Venter, C. et al. 2009. Unraveling the emission geometry of the Fermi millisecond pulsars. 2009 Fermi Symposium, 2-5 Nov, Washington, D.C. eConf Proceedings C0911022. [https://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.1800.pdf]