2010/01/11 by Chris Kelso, Christopher M. Kelso, Dan Hooper
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #CMB cold spot #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmic ray #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Electron #Nuclear physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Positron #Pulsar #Sky #Synchrotron #Vela #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2010/05/039
published as JCAP 1005:039,2010 · 11 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2010/01/11 · openalex publication_date 2010/06/01 · arxiv updated 2014/11/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
The rising cosmic ray positron fraction reported by the PAMELA collaboration has lead to a great deal of interest in astrophysical sources of energetic electrons and positrons, including pulsars. In this paper, we calculate the spectrum of synchrotron emission from electrons and positrons injected from 366 young pulsars ( < 10 6 years) contained in the ATNF catalog, and compare our results to observations. We find that if objects such as the Vela and Crab pulsars have injected ∼ 10 48 erg or more in energetic electrons and/or positrons, they are expected to produce bright and distinctive features in the synchrotron sky. Intriguingly, we predict hard synchrotron emission from these regions of the sky which is qualitatively similar to that observed by WMAP.