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Search for Pulsed TeV Gamma-ray Emission from the Crab Pulsar

Lang, Mark
; 
Gillanders, Gary
Identifiers
http://hdl.handle.net/10379/2512
https://doi.org/10.13025/15739
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Publication Date
1999
Keywords
Astrophysics
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Article
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Citation
R.W. Lessard, I.H. Bond, S.M. Bradbury, J.H. Buckley, A.M. Burdett, D.A. Carter-Lewis, M. Catanese, M.F. Cawley, M. D'Vali, D.J. Fegan, J.P. Finley, J.A. Gaidos, G.H. Gillanders, T. Hall, A.M. Hillas, F. Krennrich, M.J. Lang, C. Masterson, P. Moriarty, J. Quinn, H.J. Rose, F.W. Samuelson, G.H. Sembroski, R. Srinivasan, V.V. Vassiliev and T.C. Weekes(1999)Search for Pulsed TeV Gamma-ray Emission from the Crab Pulsar,
Abstract
We present the results of a search for pulsed TeV emission from the Crab pulsar using the Whipple Observatory's 10 m gamma-ray telescope. The direction of the Crab pulsar was observed for a total of 73.4 hours between 1994 November and 1997 March. During this period the Whipple 10 m telescope was operated at its lowest energy threshold to date. Spectral analysis techniques were applied to search for the presence of a gamma-ray signal from the Crab pulsar over the energy band 250 GeV to 4 TeV. We do not see any evidence of the 33 ms pulsations present in other energy bands from the Crab pulsar. The 99.9% confidence level upper limit for pulsed emission above 250 GeV is derived to be 4.8x10^-12 cm^-2 s^-1 or <3% of the steady flux from the Crab Nebula. These results imply a sharp cut-off of the power-law spectrum seen by the EGRET instrument on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory. If the cut-off is exponential, it must begin at 60 GeV or lower to accommodate these upper limits.
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland
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School of Physics (Scholarly Articles)