Gamma-ray spectra of the Crab, Vela and Geminga pulsars fitted with SED of the emission from their current sheet

Abstract

Abstract We show that the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the tightly focused radiation generated by the superluminally moving current sheet in the magnetosphere of a non-aligned neutron star fits the gamma-ray spectra of the Crab, Vela and Geminga pulsars over the entire range of photon energies so far detected by Fermi-LAT, MAGIC and HESS from them: over 102 MeV to 20 TeV. While emblematic of any emission that entails caustics, the SED introduced here radically differs from those of the disparate emission mechanisms currently invoked in the literature to fit the data in different sections of these spectra. We specify, moreover, the connection between the values of the fit parameters for the analysed spectra and the physical characteristics of the central neutron stars of the Crab, Vela and Geminga pulsars and their magnetospheres.