SEARCH FOR A CORRELATION BETWEEN VERY-HIGH-ENERGY GAMMA RAYS AND GIANT RADIO PULSES IN THE CRAB PULSAR

Journal Article · Sat Dec 01 04:00:00 EST 2012 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/760/2/136· OSTI ID:22086216

Aliu, E ^[1]; Archambault, S ^[2]; Arlen, T ^[3]; Aune, T; Bouvier, A ^[4]; Beilicke, M; Buckley, J H; Bugaev, V; Dickherber, R ^[5]; Benbow, W ^[6]; Byrum, K ^[7]; Cesarini, A; Connolly, M P ^[8]; Ciupik, L ^[9]; Collins-Hughes, E ^[10]; Cui, W ^[11]; Duke, C ^[12]; Dumm, J ^[13]; Falcone, A ^[14]; Federici, S ^[15] ; others, and

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1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Barnard College, Columbia University, NY 10027 (United States)
2. Physics Department, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2T8 (Canada)
3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (United States)
4. Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics and Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
5. Department of Physics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130 (United States)
6. Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Amado, AZ 85645 (United States)
7. Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439 (United States)
8. School of Physics, National University of Ireland Galway, University Road, Galway (Ireland)
9. Astronomy Department, Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, Chicago, IL 60605 (United States)
10. School of Physics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4 (Ireland)
11. Department of Physics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 (United States)
12. Department of Physics, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA 50112-1690 (United States)
13. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 (United States)
14. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 525 Davey Lab, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)
15. DESY, Platanenallee 6, 15738 Zeuthen (Germany)

We present the results of a joint observational campaign between the Green Bank radio telescope and the VERITAS gamma-ray telescope, which searched for a correlation between the emission of very-high-energy (VHE) gamma rays (E {sub {gamma}} > 150 GeV) and giant radio pulses (GRPs) from the Crab pulsar at 8.9 GHz. A total of 15,366 GRPs were recorded during 11.6 hr of simultaneous observations, which were made across four nights in 2008 December and in 2009 November and December. We searched for an enhancement of the pulsed gamma-ray emission within time windows placed around the arrival time of the GRP events. In total, eight different time windows with durations ranging from 0.033 ms to 72 s were positioned at three different locations relative to the GRP to search for enhanced gamma-ray emission which lagged, led, or was concurrent with, the GRP event. Furthermore, we performed separate searches on main pulse GRPs and interpulse GRPs and on the most energetic GRPs in our data sample. No significant enhancement of pulsed VHE emission was found in any of the preformed searches. We set upper limits of 5-10 times the average VHE flux of the Crab pulsar on the flux simultaneous with interpulse GRPs on single-rotation-period timescales. On {approx}8 s timescales around interpulse GRPs, we set an upper limit of 2-3 times the average VHE flux. Within the framework of recent models for pulsed VHE emission from the Crab pulsar, the expected VHE-GRP emission correlations are below the derived limits.

• OSTI ID: 22086216
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 760; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ASTROPHYSICS
CORRELATIONS
COSMIC GAMMA SOURCES
COSMIC PHOTONS
COSMIC RAY FLUX
GAMMA ASTRONOMY
GAMMA DETECTION
GAMMA RADIATION
GEV RANGE
GHZ RANGE
PHOTON EMISSION
PULSARS
PULSES
RADIO TELESCOPES
RADIOASTRONOMY
ROTATION
STARS