Fermi pulsar revolution

Understand

2009 has been an extraordinary year for gamma-ray pulsar astronomy and 2010 promises to be equally good.

• Not only have we registered an extraordinary increase in the number of pulsars detected in gamma rays, but we have also witnessed the birth of new sub-families: first of all, the radio-quiet gamma pulsars and later an ever growing number of millisecond pulsars, a real surprise.
• We started with a sample of 7 gamma-ray emitting neutron stars (6 radio pulsars and Geminga) and now the Fermi-LAT harvest encompasses 24 "Geminga-like" new gamma-ray pulsars, a dozen millisecond pulsars and about thirty radio pulsars.
• Moreover, radio searches targeted to LAT unidentified sources yielded 18 new radio millisecond pulsars, several of which have been already detected also in gamma rays.