A statistical scenario is proposed to explain the $γ$-ray variability and flares of the Crab nebula, which were observed recently by the Fermi/LAT. In this scenario electrons are accelerated in a series of knots, whose sizes follow a power-law distribution. These knots presumably move outwards from the pulsar and have a distribution in the Doppler boost factor. The maximal electron energy is assumed to be proportional to the size of the knot. Fluctuations at the highest energy end of the overall electron distribution will result in variable $γ$-ray emission via the synchrotron process in the $\sim 100$ MeV range. Since highly boosted larger knots are rarer than smaller knots, the model predicts that the variability of the synchrotron emission increases with the photon energy. We realize such a scenario with a Monte-Carlo simulation and find that the model can reproduce both the two $γ$-ray flares over a period of $\sim$ year and the monthly scale $γ$-ray flux fluctuations as observed by the Fermi/LAT. The observed $γ$-ray spectra in both the steady and flaring states are also well reproduced.
Flaring episodes from Crab Nebula have been observed. A new mechanism of emission is explored. Particles in Crab pulsar are accelerated to multiple Tev energies, by some mechanisms, described in the paper and they are the reason of observed emission. We argue, that after accelerating to high energies, they may maintain the force-free regime - moving along the magnetic field lines in such a way that no force acts on them. This way, they can move to the Nebula without loss, which makes Tev energy emission from Crab Nebula quite possible.
The Crab pulsar and its nebula are very luminous and variable. Since 1982, random fluctuations of the dispersion measure (DM) have been recorded. Also in 2011, Fermi-LAT telescope detected $γ$-ray flux variation of the Crab nebula. No correlation between these phenomena have considered although their fluctuating patterns look similar. We propose a model which connects the DM and the Crab nebula $γ$-ray flux fluctuation, motivated by recently reported correlation between the braking index and the DM variability. Considering electrons within the inner shock region of the nebula produced in break…
The giant gamma-ray flares of the Crab nebula discovered by AGILE and Fermi observatories came as a surprise and have challenged the existing models of pulsar wind nebulae. We have carried out an analysis of 10.5 years of Fermi-LAT observations (Aug 2008 -- Feb 2019) and investigated variability of the Crab nebula in the 100-300 MeV range. Besides the flares, we found several month long depressions of the gamma-ray flux and identified several cases of sharp flux drops, where during one week the flux decreased by an order of magnitude with respect to its average value. No statistically signific…
The nature of the supernova leading to the Crab Nebula has long been controversial because of the low energy that is present in the observed nebula. One possibility is that there is significant energy in extended fast material around the Crab but searches for such material have not led to detections. An electron capture supernova model can plausibly account for the low energy and the observed abundances in the Crab. Here, we examine the evolution of the Crab pulsar wind nebula inside a freely expanding supernova and find that the observed properties are most consistent with a low energy event.…
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is a TeV gamma-ray detector, completed in early 2015. HAWC started science operations in August 2013 with a third of the detector taking data. Several known gamma-ray sources have already been detected with the first HAWC data. Among these sources, the Crab Nebula, the brightest steady gamma-ray source at very high energies in our Galaxy, has been detected with high significance. In this contribution I will present the results of the observations of the Crab Nebula with HAWC, including time variability, and the detector performance based on …
Slightly more than 30 years ago, Whipple detection of the Crab Nebula was the start of Very High Energy gamma-ray astronomy. Since then, gamma-ray observations of this source have continued to provide new surprises and challenges to theories, with the detection of fast variability, pulsed emission up to unexpectedly high energy, and the very recent detection of photons with energy exceeding 1 PeV. In this article we review the impact of gamma-ray observations on our understanding of this extraordinary accelerator.
The ~400 MeV flaring emission from the Crab Nebula is naturally explained as the result of an abrupt reduction in the mass-loading of the pulsar wind. Very few particles are then available to carry the current required to maintain wave activity, causing them to achieve high Lorentz factors. When they penetrate the Nebula, a tightly beamed, high luminosity burst of hard gamma-rays results, with characteristics similar to the observed flares. This mechanism may operate in other powerful pulsars, such as J0537-6910 (PWN N 157B), B0540-69, B1957+20 and J0205+6449 (3C 58).
Recently, two photons with energy of about 1 PeV have been detected by LHAASO from the Crab nebula, opening an ultra-high energy window for studying the pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe). Remarkably, the LHAASO spectrum at the highest-energy end shows a possible hardening, which could indicate the presence of a new component. A two-component scenario with a main electron component and a secondary proton component has been proposed to explain the whole spectrum of the Crab Nebula, requiring a proton energy of $10^{46}-10^{47}{\rm ergs}$ remaining in the present Crab Nebula. In this paper, we study the…
We construct a turbulent model of the Crab Nebula's non-thermal emission. The present model resolves a number of long-standing problems of the Kennel-Coroniti (1984) model: (i) the sigma problem; (ii) the hard spectrum of radio electrons; (iii) the high peak energy of gamma-ray flares; (iv) and the spacial evolution of the infrared (IR) emission. The Nebula contains two populations of injected particles: Component-I accelerated at the wind termination shock via Fermi-I mechanism, and Component-II accelerated in reconnecting turbulence in highly magnetized ($σ$ $\gg 1$) plasma in the central pa…
The Crab Nebula is an extreme particle accelerator boosting the energy of electrons up to a few PeV ($10^{15} \ \rm eV$), close to the maximum energy allowed by theory. The physical conditions in the acceleration site and the nature of the acceleration process itself remain highly uncertain. The key information about the highest energy accelerated particles is contained in the synchrotron and inverse Compton (IC) channels of radiation at energies above 1~MeV and 100~TeV, respectively. The recent report of detection of ultra-high energy gamma-ray signal from the Crab Nebula up to 300~TeV allows…
The Crab nebula is a prominent pulsar wind nebula (PWN) detected in multiband observations ranging from radio to very high-energy (VHE) $γ$-rays. Recently, $γ$-rays with energies above $1 \mathrm{PeV}$ had been detected by the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO), and the energy of the most energetic particles in the nebula can be constrained. In this paper, we investigate the broadest spectral energy distribution of the Crab nebula and the energy distribution of the electrons emitting the multiwavelength nonthermal emission based on a one-zone time-dependent model. The nebula i…
We study electron and positron acceleration at the termination shock of a striped pulsar wind. Drift motion along the shock surface keeps either electrons or positrons -but not both, close to the equatorial plane of the pulsar, where they are accelerated by the first-order Fermi process. Their energy spectrum is a power law, and both the X-ray flux and photon index of the Crab Nebula, as measured by NuSTAR, can be reproduced for sufficiently large downstream turbulence levels. The implication that one sign of charge is preferentially accelerated in pulsar wind nebulae is potentially important …
We report on observations of the polarization of optical and γ-ray photons from the Crab nebula and pulsar system using the Galway Astronomical Stokes Polarimeter (GASP), the Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys (HST/ACS) and the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory satellite (Integral). These, when combined with other optical polarization observations, suggest that the polarized optical emission and γ-ray polarization changes in a similar manner. A change in the optical polarization angle has been observed by this work, from 109.5 \pm 0.7°in 2005 to 85.3 \pm 1.4 °in 2…
It has been long debated whether the high-energy gamma-ray radiation from the Crab nebula stems from leptonic or hadronic processes. In this work, we investigate the multi-band non-thermal radiation from the Crab pulsar wind nebula with the leptonic and leptonic-hadronic hybrid models, respectively. Then we use the Markov Chain Monte Carlo(MCMC) sampling technology and method of sampling trace to study the stability and reasonability of the model parameters according to the recent observed results and obtain the best-fitting values of parameters. Finally, we calculate different radiative compo…
In-flight calibration of the INTEGRAL/IBIS Compton mode: Application to the Crab Nebula polarization
CEA/CNRS/Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Cité（法国原子能委员会/法国国家科学研究中心/巴黎萨克雷大学、巴黎西岱大学）；Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg（维尔茨堡朱利叶斯-马克西米利安大学）；APC, Université Paris Cité/CNRS/CEA（粒子与宇宙学实验室，巴黎西岱大学/法国国家科学研究中心/法国原子能委员会）
Gamma radiation from the Crab pulsar wind nebula (PWN) shows significant variability at $\sim100$ MeV energies, recently revealed with spaceborne gamma-ray telescopes. Here we report the results of a systematic search for gamma-ray flares using a 7.4-year data set acquired with the Fermi Large Area Telescope. Analyzing the off-pulse phases of the Crab pulsar, we found seven previously unreported low-intensity flares ("small flares"). The "small flares'' originate from the variable synchrotron component of the Crab PWN and show clearly different features from the steady component of the Crab PW…
HAGAR is a system of seven Non-imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located at Hanle in the Ladakh region of the Indian Himalayas at an altitude of 4270 meters {\it amsl}. Since 2008, we have observed the Crab Nebula to assess the performance of the HAGAR telescopes. We describe the analysis technique for the estimation of $γ$-ray signal amidst cosmic ray background. The consolidated results spanning nine years of the Crab nebula observations show long term performance of the HAGAR telescopes. Based on about 219 hours of data, we report the detection of $γ$-rays from the Crab Nebula at a s…
We show that the mysterious, rapidly variable emission at ~400 MeV observed from the Crab Nebula by the AGILE and Fermi experiments could be the result of a sudden drop in the mass-loading of the pulsar wind. The current required to maintain wave activity in the wind is then carried by very few particles of high Lorentz factor. On impacting the Nebula, these particles produce a tightly beamed, high luminosity burst of hard gamma-rays, similar to those observed. This implies (i) the emission is synchrotron radiation in the toroidal field of the Nebula, and, therefore, linearly polarized and (ii…
The Crab Nebula is a bright emitter of non-thermal radiation across the entire accessible range of wavelengths. The spatial and spectral structures of the synchrotron nebula are well-resolved from radio to hard X-ray emission. The un-pulsed emission at GeV to TeV energies is mostly produced via inverse-Compton scattering of energetic electrons with the synchrotron-emitted photons. The spatial structure observed at these energies provides insights into the distribution of electrons and indirectly constrains the so-far unknown structure of the magnetic field in the nebula. Analyzing the LAT data…
We report follow-up observations of the Crab nebula with the PolarLight X-ray polarimeter, which revealed a possible variation in polarization associated with a pulsar glitch in 2019. The new observations confirm that the polarization has recovered roughly 100 days after the glitch. With the new observations, we find that the polarization angle (PA) measured with PolarLight from the total nebular emission has a difference of 18.0 +- 4.6 (deg) from that measured 42 years ago with OSO-8, indicating a secular evolution of polarization with either the Crab nebula or pulsar. The long-term variation…
We present [O III] 4959,5007 emission line spectra (FWHM = 40 km/s) of the Crab Nebula's northern ejecta `jet'. These data, along with a recent [O III] image of the Crab, are used to build 3-dimensional models of the jet and adjacent remnant nebulosity to better understand the jet's properties and possible formation. We find that the jet's radial velocities range from -190 to +480 km/s with transverse velocities from 1600 to 2650 km/s from base to tip. The jet appears virtually hollow in [O III] emission with the exception of some material at the jet's base where the it connects with the remna…
HAWC has developed new energy algorithms using an artificial neural network for event-by-event reconstruction of Very High Energy (VHE) primary gamma ray energies. Unlike previous estimation methods for HAWC photons, these estimate photon energies with good energy precision and accuracy in a range from 1 TeV to greater than 100 TeV. Photon emission at the highest energies is of interest in understanding acceleration mechanisms of astrophysical sources and where the acceleration might cut off. We apply the new HAWC reconstruction to present the preliminary measurement of the highest energies at…
The Crab nebula was once considered to be a stable source until strong flares, up to 30 times increase in flux, were observed in the MeV and GeV energy range by the AGILE and Fermi Gamma-ray Observatories. Existing nebula models often assume that the electron population emitting synchrotron radiation at lower energies is responsible for the VHE emission via Inverse Compton (IC) scattering. This suggests that the variability of the synchrotron $γ$-ray emission may also become observable in the multi-TeV energy range. Until now, no variability in the Crab Nebula flux has been found in the VHE re…
In 1989, the Whipple 10m telescope achieved the first indisputable detection of a TeV gamma-ray source, the Crab Nebula. Until its decommissioning in 2011, the Whipple telescope took regular measurements of the nebula. With the recent discovery of GeV gamma-ray flaring activity in the Crab Nebula, it is an opportune time to return to the Whipple telescope data set and search its extensive archive for evidence of TeV flares. A data set on the Crab Nebula spanning ten years, 2000 - 2010, is compiled and searched for day-scale flaring activity using a Bayesian-block binning algorithm. No evidence…
Multi-band emission from radio to ultra-high energy gamma-rays in the Crab Nebula has been detected. To explain the observed results, non-thermal photon production \textbf{in} the Crab Nebula is carefully studied in a spatially dependent lepto-hadronic model. In our model, the dynamical evolution of the PWN is simulated in a spherically symmetric system. Both electrons and protons are accelerated at the termination shock. The relevant particle propagation equations as well as the photon evolving equation are simultaneously solved. For the Crab Nebula, our results reveal that the observed multi…
The Crab Nebula is one of the most efficient accelerators in the Galaxy and the only galactic source showing direct evidence of PeV particles. In spite of this, the physical process behind such effective acceleration is still a deep mystery. While particle acceleration, at least at the highest energies, is commonly thought to occur at the pulsar wind termination shock, the properties of the upstream flow are thought to be non-uniform along the shock surface, and important constraints on the mechanism at work come from exact knowledge of where along this surface particles are being accelerated.…
We have analyzed 16 years of observations dedicated to the Crab (pulsar + nebula) with the INTEGRAL SPI instrument to investigate its polarization properties. We find that the source presents a substantially polarized emission (PF = 24%) in the hard X-ray domain, with the electric vector aligned with the pulsar spin axis, in agreement with other results at various wavelengths. The stability of the polarization characteristics with energy and over the 16 years covered by the data is remarkable, completing the standard candle status of the source in the spectral domain. The polarization measurem…
We model the inner knot of the Crab Nebula as a synchrotron emission coming from the non-spherical MHD termination shock of relativistic pulsar wind. The post-shock flow is mildly relativistic; as a result the Doppler-beaming has a strong impact on the shock appearance. The model can reproduce the knot location, size, elongation, brightness distribution, luminosity and polarization provided the effective magnetization of the section of the pulsar wind producing the knot is low, $σ\leq 1$. In the striped wind model, this implies that the striped zone is rather wide, with the magnetic inclinatio…
Since 2009, several rapid and bright flares have been observed at high energies (>100 MeV) from the direction of the Crab Nebula. Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain this phenomenon, but the origin is still unclear. The detection of counterparts at higher energies with the next generation of Cherenkov telescopes will be determinant to constrain the underlying emission mechanisms. We aim at studying the capability of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) to explore the physics behind the flares, by performing simulations of the Crab Nebula spectral energy distribution, both in fla…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the next generation instrument for the very high energy gamma-ray astrophysics domain. With its enhanced sensitivity in comparison with the current facilities, CTA is expected to shed light on a varied population of sources. In particular, we will achieve a deeper knowledge of the Crab nebula and pulsar, which are the best characterized pulsar wind nebula and rotation powered pulsar, respectively. We aim at studying the capabilities of CTA regarding these objects through simulations, using the main tools currently in development for the CTA future da…
A pulsar wind is a relativistic outflow dominated by Poynting energy at its base. Based on the standard ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model of pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) with the ordered magnetic field, the observed slow expansion $v_{\rm PWN} \ll c$ requires the wind to be dominated by kinetic energy at the upstream of its termination shock, which conflicts with the pulsar wind theory ($σ$-problem). In this paper, we extend the standard model of PWNe by phenomenologically taking into account conversion of the ordered to turbulent magnetic field and dissipation of the turbulent magnetic fiel…
We study particle acceleration at the termination shock of a striped pulsar wind by integrating trajectories in a prescribed model of the magnetic field and flow pattern. Drift motion on the shock surface maintains either electrons or positrons on "Speiser" orbits in a ring-shaped region close to the equatorial plane of the pulsar, enabling them to be accelerated to very high energy by the first-order Fermi mechanism. A power-law spectrum results: $dN_{\rm e}/dγ\proptoγ^{α_{\rm e}}$, where $α_{\rm e}$ lies in the range $-1.8$ to $-2.4$ and depends on the downstream turbulence level. For suffic…
