Pulsars in gamma rays: What Fermi is teaching us

Abstract

The 2nd Fermi-LAT pulsar catalog includes 117 γ-ray pulsars, of which roughly one third are millisecond pulsars (MSPs) while the remaining two thirds split evenly into young radio-loud and radio-quiet pulsars. Although this large population will enable future, detailed studies of emission mechanisms and the evolution of the underlying neutron star population, some nearly-universal properties are already clear and unequivocal. We discuss some of these aspects below, including the altitude of the γ-ray emission site, the shape of the γ-ray spectrum, and the implications of the latter for the radiation mechanism. © 2013 International Astronomical Union.