Files
Download Full Text (801 KB)
Document Type
Poster
Publication Date
10-1-2025
Abstract
The Crab Nebula is one of the most studied astrophysical objects at very-high-energies (VHE) and is one of the brightest sources of VHE gamma-rays. The Crab Nebula is a pulsar wind nebula with the Crab pulsar providing the energy and particles to power the nebula. The gamma-ray emission from the nebula and pulsar are understood to come from relativistic particles but the processes that are responsible for accelerating these particles is not well understood. Studying the highest energy emission from the Crab Nebula can provide valuable insight into the underlying emission mechanisms at work. This project was intended to examine an additional 2 years of Crab Nebula data taken by the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) to be added to previous dataset. Due to some issues with our computational resources at NERSC, we shifted from analyzing the data with a focus on the nebula to analyzing the pulsed-emission from the pulsar. The central engine of the Crab nebula is the Crab pulsar. Timing studies of the pulsed emission from the pulsar can improve understanding of the physics at work near the pulsar. To date only two pulsars have been observed to emit VHE photons, so our current understanding of the VHE emission mechanisms is in its infancy.
Department
Department of Physics and Astronomy, DePauw University
Project Mentor
Avery Archer
Recommended Citation
Empie, Adi; Nguyen, Thao; and Archer, Avery, "The Heart of the Crab: Analyzing the VHE Emission from the Crab Pulsar" (2025). Annual Student Research Poster Session. 226.
https://scholarship.depauw.edu/srfposters/226
Funding and Acknowledgements
"This research is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution, by NSERC in Canada, and by the Helmholtz Association in Germany. This research used resources provided by the Open Science Grid, which is supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, and resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. We acknowledge the excellent work of the technical support staff at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory and at the collaborating institutions in the construction and operation of the instrument."