Discovery of Powerful Gamma-Ray Flares from the Crab Nebula

Details Discovery of Powerful Gamma-Ray Flares from the Crab Nebula Discovery of Powerful Gamma-Ray Flares from the Crab Nebula

2011-01-12

arxiv.org/abs/1101.2311v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

23 pages (including Supporting On-line Material), 8 figures, 1 table. Version published in Science Express on January 6, 2011

Scientific paper

10.1126/science.1200083

The well known Crab Nebula is at the center of the SN1054 supernova remnant. It consists of a rotationally-powered pulsar interacting with a surrounding nebula through a relativistic particle wind. The emissions originating from the pulsar and nebula have been considered to be essentially stable. Here we report the detection of strong gamma-ray (100 MeV-10 GeV) flares observed by the AGILE satellite in September, 2010 and October, 2007. In both cases, the unpulsed flux increased by a factor of 3 compared to the non-flaring flux. The flare luminosity and short timescale favor an origin near the pulsar, and we discuss Chandra Observatory X-ray and HST optical follow-up observations of the nebula. Our observations challenge standard models of nebular emission and require power-law acceleration by shock-driven plasma wave turbulence within a ~1-day timescale.

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