The observation of cosmic sub-PeV gamma-rays from the Crab Nebula opens up the possibility of testing cosmic ray photon transparency at the multi-hundred TeV scale. Assuming no deviation from a source gamma-ray emission due to accelerated electron inverse-Compton scattering, higher event energies can extend constraints on the effects of new physics; We consider oscillation between gamma-rays and axions/dark photons, plus attenuation effects from gamma-ray absorption in the case of dark photon dark matter. Combining the recent AS$γ$ and HAWC sub-PeV data with earlier MAGIC and HEGRA data, axion-like particles are most constrained in the $10^{-7}-10^{-6}$ eV mass range, where the coupling $g_{aγ}$ is constrained to be below ${1.8}\times 10^{-10}$ GeV$^{-1}$. In comparison, gamma ray flux attenuation due to oscillation with a dark photon leads to a very weak constraint on the mixing parameter; $ε\lesssim$ 0.2 for dark photon mass between $10^{-7}$ and $10^{-6}$ eV. Direct scattering from dark photon dark matter limits $ε\lesssim$ 0.01 for masses between $6$ and $400$ eV.
We calculate the decay width of the photon splitting into three photons in a model of quantum electrodynamics with broken Lorentz invariance. We show that this process can lead to a cut-off in the very-high-energy part of a photon spectra of astrophysical sources. We obtain the 95\% CL bound on the Lorentz violating mass scale for photons from the analysis of the very-high-energy part of the Crab Nebula spectrum, obtained by HEGRA. This bound improves previous constraints by more than an order of magnitude.
Recently two collaborations, Tibet and HAWC, presented new measurements of gamma-ray spectrum from Crab Nebula \cite{Amenomori:2019rjd},\cite{Abeysekara:2019edl} which continues beyond $100$ TeV. We use these data to establish two-sided constraints on parameters of Lorentz Invariance violation in quantum electrodynamics. The limits on Lorentz violating mass scale for quartic dispersion relation are $4.1\times 10^{14}\ \mbox{GeV}$ (photon splitting) and $1.9\times 10^{13}\ \mbox{GeV}$ (photon decay) for superluminal case, and $1.4\times 10^{12}$ GeV (suppression of shower formation) for sublumi…
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.
We spectrally fit the GeV gamma-ray flares recently-observed in the Crab Nebula by considering a small blob Lorentz-boosted towards us. We point out that the corresponding inverse-Compton flare at TeV--PeV region is more enhanced than synchrotron by a Lorentz factor square \sim Γ^2, which is already excluding Γ\gtrsim 200 and will be detected by future TeV - PeV observatories, CTA, Tibet AS + MD and LHAASO for Γ\gtrsim 30. We also show that PeV photons emitted from the Crab Nebula are absorbed by Cosmic Microwave Background radiation through electron-positron pair creation.
Magnetic dissipation is frequently invoked as a way of powering the observed emission of relativistic flows in Gamma Ray Bursts and Active Galactic Nuclei. Pulsar Wind Nebulae provide closer to home cosmic laboratories which can be used to test the hypothesis. To this end, we analyze the observational data on the spindown power of the Crab pulsar, energetics of the Crab nebula, and its magnetic field. We show that unless the magnetic inclination angle of the Crab pulsar is very close to 90 degrees the overall magnetization of the striped wind after total dissipation of its stripes is significa…
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 Crab nebula and its pulsar (referred to together as "Crab") have historically played a central role in astrophysics. True to their legacy, several unique discoveries have been made recently. The Crab was found to emit gamma-ray pulsations up to energies of 400 GeV, beyond what was previously expected from pulsars. Strong gamma-ray flares, of durations of a few days were discovered from within the nebula, while the source was previously expected to be stable in flux on these time scales. Here we review these intriguing and suggestive developments. In this context we give an overview of the …
The remarkable Crab Nebula is powered by an energetic pulsar whose relativistic wind interacts with the inner parts of the Supernova Remnant SN1054. Despite low-intensity optical and X-ray variations in the inner Nebula, the Crab has been considered until now substantially stable at X-ray and gamma-ray energies. This paradigm has been shattered by the AGILE discovery in September 2010 of a very intense transient gamma-ray flare of nebular origin. For the first time, the Crab Nebula was "caught in the act" of accelerating particles up to 10^15 eV within the shortest timescale ever observed in a…
The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory~(LHAASO) recently reported the detection of gamma-ray emissions with energies up to $1.1~\textrm{PeV}$ from the Crab Nebula. Using the absence of vacuum Cherenkov effect by inverse-Compton electrons, we improve previous bounds to linear-order Lorentz invariance violation (LV) in the dispersion relations of electrons by $10^{4}$ times. We show that the LV effect on electrons is severely constrained, compatible with certain type of LV as expected by some models of quantum gravity~(QG), such as the string/D-brane inspired space-time foam. We argue th…
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 Crab Pulsar Wind Nebula is the best studied source of $γ$-ray astrophysics. The contribution of the various soft radiation fields to the Inverse Compton component of its high energy emission, the strenght of the internal magnetic field and the maximum energies reached by primary electrons are however still matter of study. The MAGIC stereoscopic system recorded almost 50 hours of Crab Nebula data in the last two years, between October 2009 and April 2011. Analysis of this data sample using the latest improvements in the MAGIC stereo software provided an unprecedented differential energy sp…
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 the AGILE and Fermi/LAT detectors uncovered giant $γ$-ray flares from the Crab nebula. The duration of these flares is a few days. The Fermi/LAT data with monthly time binning further showed significant variability of the synchrotron tail of the emission, while the inverse Compton component was stable. The simultaneous or follow-up observations in X-ray, optical, infrared and radio bands did not find significant flux variation. Based on these observations, we propose that the $γ$-ray variability and flares are due to statistical fluctuations of knots that can accelerate electrons to $…
In this paper we discuss the development of Rayleigh-Taylor filaments in axisymmetric simulations of Pulsar wind nebulae (PWN). High-resolution adaptive mesh refinement magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations are used to resolve the non-linear evolution of the instability. The typical separation of filaments is mediated by the turbulent flow in the nebula and hierarchical growth of the filaments. The strong magnetic dissipation and field-randomization found in recent global three-dimensional simulations of PWN suggests that magnetic tension is not strong enough to suppress the growth of RT filam…
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…
In recent years, it has become a well-established paradigm that many aspects of the physics of Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe) can be fully accounted for within a relativistic MHD description. Numerical simulations have proven extremely successful in reproducing the X-ray morphology of the Crab Nebula, down to very fine detail. Radio emission, instead, is currently one of the most obscure aspects of the physics of these objects, and one that holds important information about pulsar properties and their role as antimatter factories. Here we address the question of radio emission morphology and integ…
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…
Subsequent to announcements by the AGILE and by the Fermi-LAT teams of the discovery of gamma-ray flares from the Crab Nebula in the fall of 2010, an international collaboration has been monitoring X-Ray emission from the Crab on a regular basis using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Observations occur typically once per month when viewing constraints allow. The aim of the program is to characterize in depth the X-Ray variations within the Nebula, and, if possible, to much more precisely locate the origin of the gamma-ray flares. In 2011 April we triggered a set of Chandra Target-of-Opportunity …
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…
The flaring activity of the Crab Nebula is one of the most puzzling phenomena of the gamma ray sky. The light curves in the energy range E >100 MeV show a high flux variability on time scales ranging from hours to weeks, with sharp emission peaks superimposed to long lasting smoother modulations, whose origin is still under debate. A long term observation of the Crab Nebula at TeV energies could add useful information to understand the mechanisms responsible of this unexpected behavior. The air shower detector ARGO-YBJ monitored the Crab Nebula in the energy range 0.5-20 TeV from November 2007…
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 has long been the standard reference point source for very-high-energy (VHE, E $>$100 GeV) gamma-ray observatories such as VERITAS. It has enabled testing and improvement of analysis methods, validation of techniques, and has served as a calibration source. No comparable extended source is known with a high, constant flux and well understood morphology. In order to artificially generate such a source, VERITAS has performed raster scans across the Crab Nebula. By displacing the source within the field-of-view in a known pattern, it is possible to generate an extended calibration…
The Crab Nebula has long been considered a standard candle in high energy astrophysics, but in recent years this assumption has been strongly contradicted in keV-GeV wavebands. In light of these developments, a search for variability is being performed on the nebula at Very High Energies (VHE; E>300 GeV), the preliminary results of which are presented here. This initial study is based on 10 years (2001-2011) of archival data from the Whipple 10 m telescope. The data set was searched for evidence of variability on the timescales of 1, 7, and 14 days. To date, no significant flaring activity has…
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…
We report on a bright flare in the Crab Nebula detected by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The period of significantly increased luminosity occurred in 2013 March and lasted for approximately 2 weeks. During this period, we observed flux variability on timescales of approximately 5\,hours. The combined photon flux above 100 MeV from the pulsar and its nebula reached a peak value of $(12.5\pm 0.8)\cdot 10^{-6}$\,cm$^{-2}$\,s$^{-1}$ on 2013 March 6. This value exceeds the average flux by almost a factor of 6 and implies a $\sim20$ times higher flux fo…
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…
New constraints on axion with gamma-ray observations of the Crab Nebula
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ)（日本国立天文台）；Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI)（高级研究院）；High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)（高能加速器研究机构）；The University of Tokyo（东京大学）
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…
Aims. We use the IBIS/ISGRI telescope on-board INTEGRAL to measure the position of the centroid of the 20-200 keV emission from the Crab region. Methods. We find that the astrometry of the IBIS telescope is affected by the temperature of the IBIS mask during the observation. After correcting for this effect, we show that the systematic errors in the astrometry of the telescope are of the order of 0.5 arcsec. In the case of the Crab nebula and several other bright sources, the very large number of photons renders the level of statistical uncertainty in the centroid smaller or comparable to this…
Recently the AGILE $γ$-ray telescope has reported the enhanced $γ$-ray emission above 100 MeV from the direction of the Crab Nebula during a period of a few days. This intriguing observation has been confirmed by the Fermi-LAT telescope. This emission does not show evidences of pulsations with the Crab pulsar. It seems that it originates at the shock region created as a result of the interaction of the pulsar wind with the nebula. We propose that such variable $γ$-ray emission originate in the region behind the shock when the electrons can be accelerated as a result of the reconnection of the …
A young and energetic pulsar powers the well-known Crab Nebula. Here we describe two separate gamma-ray (photon energy >100 MeV) flares from this source detected by the Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The first flare occurred in February 2009 and lasted approximately 16 days. The second flare was detected in September 2010 and lasted approximately 4 days. During these outbursts the gamma-ray flux from the nebula increased by factors of four and six, respectively. The brevity of the flares implies that the gamma rays were emitted via synchrotron radiation from…
We investigate the dynamical propagation of the South-East jet from the Crab pulsar interacting with supernova ejecta by means of three-dimensional relativistic MHD numerical simulations with the PLUTO code. The initial jet structure is set up from the inner regions of the Crab Nebula. We study the evolution of hot, relativistic hollow outflows initially carrying a purely azimuthal magnetic field. Our jet models are characterized by different choices of the outflow magnetization ($σ$ parameter) and the bulk Lorentz factor ($γ_{j}$). We show that the jet is heavily affected by the growth of cur…
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.…
The Crab Nebula was discovered as the first very-high-energy gamma-ray source by the Whipple Observatory in 1989. Thirty years after its discovery it is still the reference source and the standard candle for Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs). Its spectrum has been measured from the cm radio band to energies up to tens of TeV. Some studies reported a possible but still debated cut-off in its spectrum at few tens of TeV. The MAGIC collaboration is currently investigating the spectrum of the Crab Nebula by using the Very Large Zenith Angle observation technique. The latter provides…
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 present new radio measurements of the expansion rate of the Crab nebula's synchrotron nebula over a ~30-yr period. We find a convergence date for the radio synchrotron nebula of CE 1255 +- 27. We also re-evaluated the expansion rate of the optical line emitting filaments, and we show that the traditional estimates of their convergence dates are slightly biased. Using an un-biased Bayesian analysis, we find a convergence date for the filaments of CE 1091 +- 34 (~40 yr earlier than previous estimates). Our results show that both the synchrotron nebula and the optical line-emitting filaments h…
The recently discovered gamma-ray flares from the Crab nebula are generally attributed to the magnetic energy release in a highly magnetized region within the nebula. I argue that such a region naturally arises in the polar region of the inner nebula. In pulsar winds, efficient dissipation of the Poynting flux into the plasma energy occur only in the equatorial belt where the energy is predominantly transferred by alternating fields. At high latitudes, the pulsar wind remains highly magnetized therefore the termination shock in the polar region is weak and the postshock flow remains relativist…
The recent discovery of PeV electrons from the Crab nebula, produced on rapid time scales of one day or less with a sharply peaked gamma-ray spectrum without hard X-rays, challenges traditional models of diffusive shock acceleration followed by synchrotron radiation. Here we outline an accleration model involving a DC electric field parallel to the magnetic field in a twisted toroidal field around the pulsar. Sudden developments of resistivity in localized regions of the twisted field are thought to drive the particle acceleration, up to PeV energies, resulting in flares. This model can reprod…
Chandra images of the Crab Nebula resolve the detailed structure of its "inner ring", possibly a termination shock where pulsar-accelerated relativistic particles begin to emit X radiation. Analysis of these images finds that the center of the ellipse-presumably a circular ring in projection-lies about 0.9" (10 light-days at 2 kpc) from the pulsar's image, at a position angle of about 300° (East of North). This analysis also measures properties of the ellipse: The position angle of the semi-major axis is about 210° (East of North); the aspect ratio, 0.49. In a simple-albeit, not unique-de-proj…
