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NPAC (Nuclear/Particle/Astro/Cosmo) Forum
Cosmic Accelerators: Pulsars and Pulsar Wind Nebulae
Date: Thursday, February 9th
Time: 4:00 pm
Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
Speaker: Aous Abdo, George Mason University
Abstract: The rapid spins and intense magnetic fields (109 - 1014 Gauss) of pulsars accelerate particles to very high energies, both in their magnetospheres and in relativistic winds, powering emission from radio waves to the highest energy gamma-rays. NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, launched in 2008, has proved to be a powerful tool for studying these systems. Fermi observations have increased the population of known gamma-ray pulsars from 6 to more than 100. New classes of gamma-ray pulsars, including millisecond and radio-quiet pulsars, have emerged. With its unprecedented sensitivity, Fermi has transformed our understanding of the energetic particle accelerators in our Galaxy and thereby linked observations of the sky at the highest photon energies (1012 eV) with those at the lower end of the electromagnetic spectrum. In my talk I will discuss some of the new and exciting results from Fermi and focus on how these discoveries integrate with the overall picture of pulsars and their nebulae that covers some 20 decades of energy.
Host: Halzen
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