1211.2628 (T. Hassan et al.)

Pulsar Prospects for the Cherenkov Telescope Array    [PDF]

T. Hassan, S. Bonnefoy, M. Lopez, N. Mirabal, J. A. Barrio, J. L. Contreras, R. de los Reyes, E. O. Wilhelmi, B. Rudak, for the CTA Consortium

In the last few years, the Fermi-LAT telescope has discovered over a 100 pulsars at energies above 100 MeV, increasing the number of known gamma-ray pulsars by an order of magnitude. In parallel, imaging Cherenkov telescopes, such as MAGIC and VERITAS, have detected for the first time VHE pulsed gamma-rays from the Crab pulsar. Such detections have revealed that the Crab VHE spectrum follows a power-law up to at least 400 GeV, challenging most theoretical models, and opening wide possibilities of detecting more pulsars from the ground with the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). In this contribution, we study the capabilities of CTA for detecting Fermi pulsars. For this, we extrapolate their spectra with "Crab-like" power-law tails in the VHE range, as suggested by the latest MAGIC and VERITAS results.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.2628