Join us on Thursday, May 15th for another installment of our Spring Physics Colloquium series! Guest lecturer, Dr. Jordan Eagle, will be visiting from NASA's Goddard Campus.

Abstract:

The Milky Way Galaxy is rich with Galactic cosmic ray (CR) accelerators such as the remains of massive stellar explosions, supernova remnants (SNRs). In the center of many core collapse SNRs are highly magnetized, rapidly rotating compact stellar cores known as pulsars. Energetic pulsars may form a pulsar wind nebula (PWN) through the conversion of rotational energy into a strongly magnetized, relativistic particle outflow. Gamma-ray PWNe are strong CR accelerator candidates since gamma-rays are produced via CR interactions, specifically the relativistic electrons of the PWN Inverse Compton Scatter off lower-energy photons. As such, PWNe may be responsible for producing Galactic CRs with energy up to ~ 1PeV. The Fermi-LAT is the most sensitive instrument observing the lower-energy (E < 100GeV) gamma-ray sky, where many PWNe are expected to peak. Fermi-LAT observations can provide important constraints on the acceleration mechanisms and thus the ability for a source to contribute to the Galactic CR flux. The results of a systematic search is presented which suggest a larger population of Fermi-LAT PWNe than currently identified exists with many found as extended and in later stages of evolution.

 

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Passcode: 969820