Detections of millisecond pulsars with the Fermi Large Area Telescope

Abstract

The Fermi observatory was launched on June 11, 2008. It hosts the \emph{Large Area Telescope} (LAT), sensitive to $\gamma$-ray photons from 20 MeV to over 300 GeV. When the LAT began its activity, nine young and energetic pulsars were known in $\gamma$ rays. At least several tens of pulsar detections by the LAT were predicted before launch. The LAT also allowed the study of millisecond pulsars (MSPs), never firmly detected in $\gamma$ rays before Fermi. This thesis first presents the pulsar timing campaign for the LAT, in collaboration with large radiotelescopes and X-ray telescopes, allowing for high sensitivity pulsed searches. Furthermore, it lead to quasi-homogeneous coverage of the galactic MSPs, so that the search for pulsations in LAT data for this population of stars was not affected by an \emph{a priori} bias. We present a search for pulsations from these objects in LAT data. For the first time, eight galactic MSPs have been detected as sources of pulsed $\gamma$-ray emission over 100 MeV. In addition, a couple of good candidates for future detection are seen. A similar search for globular cluster MSPs has not succeeded so far. Comparison of the phase-aligned $\gamma$-ray and radio light curves, as well as the spectral shapes, leads to the conclusion that their $\gamma$-ray emission is similar to that of normal pulsars, and is probably produced in the outer-magnetosphere. This discovery suggests that many unresolved $\gamma$-ray sources are unknown MSPs.