New Study Confirms TeV Halos Are Common in Middle-Aged Pulsars-OxBig News Network

Pulsars are neutron stars rotating quickly, emitting electromagnetic radiation in numerous wavelengths, together with radio waves, optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray. In some center aged pulsars, areas of prolonged gamma-ray emission in tera electron volt (TeV) energies are documented in current days. These areas, known as TeV halos, had been discovered to be considerably bigger than their corresponding pulsar’s wind nebulae. Despite being more and more documented, the query prevailed if TeV halos are frequent or uncommon phenomenon. In a current research by a big group of researchers from USA and Mexico, recommend that TeV halos are common options of middle-aged pulsars.

About the research

According to the study, TeV halos are common options of middle-aged pulsars and will thus be used to determine pulsars that can not be detected utilizing devices designed to choose up radio waves or lower-energy gamma rays.

In this research researchers analysed a sky map containing high-energy gamma-ray observations collected over a interval of two,300 days on the HAWC observatory. The HAWC observatory, located on the slopes of the Sierra Negra volcano in Mexico, specializes within the detection of secondary particles which are produced when high-energy gamma rays originating from area attain Earth’s atmosphere.

The crew recognized TeV halos across the middle-aged pulsars that had been in HAWC’s subject of view. Then they used their probability profiles to find out how the information signifies the presence of prolonged gamma-ray emission. Stacking these profiles, they assessed a collective sign that might point out the widespread presence of TeV halos.

Future implications

The discovery of TeV halos to be a common phenomenon implies that they could possibly be used to detect the somewhat undetectable pulsars.

Sara Coutiño De León, co-author of the paper, mentioned to Phys.org, “This means that we might have to revisit and revise present fashions of how high-energy particles journey by way of the Milky Way. We now plan to conduct detailed research of particular person TeV halos. By doing this, we purpose to raised perceive how particles propagate in and round these sources.”