Six Faint Gamma-ray Pulsars Seen with the Fermi Large Area Telescope -- Towards a Sample Blending into the Background

Understand

Context: GeV gamma-ray pulsations from over 140 pulsars have been characterized using the Fermi Large Area Telescope, enabling improved understanding of the emission regions within the neutron star magnetospheres, and the contributions of pulsars to high energy electrons and diffuse gamma rays in the Milky Way.

• The first gamma-ray pulsars to be detected were the most intense and/or those with narrow pulses.
• Aims: As the Fermi mission progresses, progressively fainter objects can be studied.
• In addition to more distant pulsars (thus probing a larger volume of the Galaxy), or ones in high background regions (thus improving the sampling uniformity across the Galactic plane), we detect pulsars with broader pulses or lower luminosity.