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Unraveling the emission geometry of the Fermi millisecond pulsars

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Venter, C.
Harding, A.K.
Guillemot, L.

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Fermi

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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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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]

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