Magnetospheric structure and high-energy photon emission of radio pulsars

Some elementary aspects of particle acceleration and flow along the polar field lines of an isolated, rotating magnetized neutron star are described. Semi-quantitaive consequences of these ideas for the emission of high energy gamma rays and their relation to gamma ray observations of radio pulsars are outlined. A global model of the magnetosphere in which these polar flows can occur is described briefly.     

Study of the variability of blazars gamma-ray emission

The γ-ray emission of blazar jets shows a pronounced variability and this feature provides limits to the size and to the speed of the emitting region. We study the γ-ray variability of bright blazars using data from the first 18 months of activity of the Large Area Telescope on the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. From the daily light-curves of the blazars characterized by a remarkable activity, we firstly determine the minimum variability time-scale, giving an upper limit for the size of the emitting region of the sources, assumed to be spheroidal blobs in relativistic motion. These regions must be smaller than ∼10⁻³ parsec. Another interesting time-scale is the duration of the outbursts. We conclude that they cannot correspond to radiation produced by a single blob moving relativistically along the jet, but they are either the signature of emission from a standing shock extracting energy from a modulated jet, or the superposition of a number of flares occurring on a shorter time-scale. We also derive lower limits on the bulk Lorentz factor needed to make the emitting region transparent for gamma-rays interacting through photon–photon collisions.     

Modeling the broadband persistent emission of magnetars

In this paper, we discuss our first attempts to model the broadband persistent emission of magnetars within a self-consistent, physical scenario. We present the predictions of a synthetic model that we calculated with a new Monte Carlo 3D radiative code. The basic idea is that soft thermal photons (e.g. emitted by the star surface) can experience resonant cyclotron upscattering by a population of relativistic electrons treated in the twisted magnetosphere. Our code is specifically tailored to work in the ultra-magnetized regime; polarization and QED effects are consistently accounted for, as well different configurations for the magnetosphere. We discuss the predicted spectral properties in the 0.1–1000 keV range, the polarization properties, and we present the model application to a sample of magnetars soft X-ray spectra.     

The beaming of external Compton emission

We consider a relativistically moving blob consisting of an isotropic electron distribution that Compton-scatters photons from an external isotropic radiation field. We compute the resulting beaming pattern, i.e. the distribution of the scattered photons, in the blob frame as well as in the observer’s frame by using the full Klein–Nishina cross section and the exact incident photon distribution. In the Thomson regime the comparison of our approach with Dermer (1995) results in concurrent characteristics but different absolute number of the scattered photons by a factor of f_corr = 3.09. Additionally, our calculation yields a slightly lower boost factor which varies the more from the corresponding value in Dermer (1995) the higher the spectral index p of the electron distribution gets.     

Electric potential structures of auroral acceleration region border from multi-spacecraft Cluster data

This paper studies an auroral event using data from three spacecraft of the Cluster mission, one inside and two at the poleward edge of the bottom of the Auroral Acceleration Region (AAR). The study reveals the three-dimensional profile of the region’s poleward boundary, showing spatial segmentation of the electric potential structures and their decay in time. It also depicts localized magnetic field variations and field-aligned currents that appear to have remained stable for at least 80?s. Such observations became possible due to the fortuitous motion of the three spacecraft nearly parallel to each other and tangential to the AAR edge, so that the differences and variations can be seen when the spacecraft enter and exit the segmentations, hence revealing their position with respect to the AAR.     

WSO-UV project

During last three decades, astronomers have enjoyed continuous access to the 100–300 nm ultraviolet (UV) spectral range where the resonance transitions of the most abundant atoms and ions (at temperatures between 3000 and 300 000 K) reside. This UV range is not accessible from ground-based facilities. The successful International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) observatory, the Russian ASTRON mission and successor instruments such as the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mission or the COS and STIS spectrographs on-board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) prove the major impact of observations in the UV wavelength range in modern astronomy. Future access to space-based observatories is expected to be very limited. For the next decade, the post-HST era, the World Space Observatory – Ultraviolet (WSO–UV) will be the only 2-m class UV telescope with capabilities similar to the HST. WSO–UV will be equipped with instruments for imaging and spectroscopy and it will be a facility dedicated, full-time, to UV astronomy. In this article, we briefly outline the current status of the WSO–UV mission and the science management plan.     

Data reduction and correction algorithm for digital real-time processing of cosmic ray measurements: NM64 monitoring at Dourbes

We present a data correction algorithm for real-time data processing for the NM64 galactic cosmic ray neutron monitor at the Royal Meteorological Institute (RMI) in Dourbes, Belgium. The correction is based on three main tests: a continuity test, tube ratios test and a derivative test. The continuity test works as a high pass filter with a threshold based on the entire recorded dataset. Additionally, it monitors whether the logging takes place at regular intervals (continuously). The ratios test identifies noisy sections and the final derivative test criterion will identify single or double spikes by testing them against the median increase of the intensities. Using these criteria, all data from the cosmic ray station at Dourbes is corrected in real time. Test results have been compared with data from verified neutron monitor stations with a similar geomagnetic cutoff rigidity.     

RTK model and positioning performance analysis using Galileo four-frequency observations

This paper proposes a real-time kinematic (RTK) model that uses one common reference satellite for the Galileo system with four frequency observations. In the proposed model, the double-differenced (DD) pseudorange and carrier phase biases among the different frequencies are estimated as unknown parameters to recover the integer features of the DD ambiguities among the different frequencies for ambiguity resolution and precise positioning. Analysis results show that the E5a, E5b, and E5 frequencies have virtually the same performance in terms of the positioning accuracy, observation residuals, and ratio values of ambiguity resolution. However, the E1 frequency performs worse than the E5a, E5b, and E5 frequencies. The RTK results for the combination of multiple frequencies are much better than those for a single-frequency observation, the coordinates’ standard deviation is improved about 20–30%, and the ambiguity fix time is improved about 10%.