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Search for the next very-high-energy gamma-ray pulsar

dfidalgo - Posted on 25 April 2016

Project Description: 

Studies of gamma-ray pulsars have benefited greatly from recent advances in both space-based (e.g. Fermi-LAT) and ground-based (e.g. MAGIC, VERITAS, HESS) observations. The number of known (> 100 MeV) gamma-ray pulsars has increased dramatically, from only a handful a decade ago, to over 200 at present. More than a dozen pulsars are now detected above 25 GeV, but only one (the Crab) has been firmly detected above 100 GeV. We intend to carry out a systematic search for high-energy emission from gamma-ray pulsars, using the latest (Pass 8) Fermi LAT data with the goal of finding the next very high energy (E > 100 GeV) gamma-ray pulsar, which we will then target for observations with the MAGIC telescope. This project involves obtaining up-to-date spectral and timing models, improving on our previously published work in this area (1FHL Catalog).

Researcher name: 
David Carreto Fidalgo
Researcher position: 
Visiting PhD Student
Researcher email: 
dfidalgo@gae.ucm.es
Researcher name: 
Dr. Pablo Saz Parkinson
Researcher position: 
Research Assistant Professor
Researcher email: 
pablosp@hku.hk
Researcher name: 
Dr. S.C.Y. Ng
Researcher position: 
Assistant Professor
Researcher email: 
ncy@bohr.physics.hku.hk
Researcher name: 
Prof. K. S. Cheng
Researcher position: 
Professor
Researcher email: 
hrspksc@hku.hk
Research Project Details
Project Duration: 
04/2016 to 04/2017
Project Significance: 
The detection of pulsars above 100 GeV severely challenges current models of pulsar emission and opens up the possibility of using pulsars as a tools for sensitive tests of quantum gravity. With this project we hope to identify a candidate (or candidates) for follow-up observations with ground-based gamma-ray telescopes, such as MAGIC, VERITAS, HESS, or HAWC.
Remarks: 
We intend to install the tools for spectral and timing analysis of gamma-ray pulsars on the HPC cluster(s) at HKU. The analyses are computationally intensive and given the large number of pulsars we wish to study would take a prohibitively long time using standard desktop or laptop computers.