Modeling of Gamma-ray Millisecond Pulsar Light Curves Revealed by Fermi-LAT

摘要

Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has recently detected 8 gamma-raymillisecond pulsars (MSPs), providing an unprecedented opportunity to probe themagnetospheres of these low-spin-down pulsars. We performed 3D emissionmodeling, including various Special Relativistic effects, in the context ofpair-starved polar cap (PSPC), slot gap (SG), and outer gap (OG) pulsar models.Most of the light curves are best fit by SG and OG models, surprisinglyindicating the presence of narrow accelerating gaps limited by robust pairproduction. All model fits imply high-altitude emission, and we observeexclusive differentiation of the current gamma-ray MSP population into twosub-classes: light curve shapes and lags across wavebands impose either PSPC orSG / OG-type geometries.