Evidence of TeV Halos Around Millisecond Pulsars

Understand

Using data from the HAWC gamma-ray Telescope, we have studied a sample of 37 millisecond pulsars (MSPs), selected for their spindown power and proximity.

• From among these MSP, we have identified four which favor the presence of very high-energy gamma-ray emission at a level of $(2\Delta \ln \mathcal{L})^{1/2} \ge 2.5$.
• Adopting a correlation between the spindown power and gamma-ray luminosity of each pulsar, we performed a stacked likelihood analysis of these 37 MSPs, finding that the data supports the conclusion that these sources emit very high-energy gamma-rays at a level of $(2\Delta \ln \mathcal{L})^{1/2} = 4.24$.
• Among sets of randomly selected sky locations within HAWC's field-of-view, less than 1\% of such realizations yielded such high statistical significance.