Publication Date:
2008-08-30
Description:
Pulsar systems accelerate particles to immense energies. The detailed functioning of these engines is still poorly understood, but polarization measurements of high-energy radiation may allow us to locate where the particles are accelerated. We have detected polarized gamma rays from the vicinity of the Crab pulsar using data from the spectrometer on the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory satellite. Our results show polarization with an electric vector aligned with the spin axis of the neutron star, demonstrating that a substantial fraction of the high-energy electrons responsible for the polarized photons are produced in a highly ordered structure close to the pulsar.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Dean, A J -- Clark, D J -- Stephen, J B -- McBride, V A -- Bassani, L -- Bazzano, A -- Bird, A J -- Hill, A B -- Shaw, S E -- Ubertini, P -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2008 Aug 29;321(5893):1183-5. doi: 10.1126/science.1149056.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18755970" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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