Pulsars – Extreme Cosmic Lighthouses / Christo Venter

Abstract

Pulsars are ancient, fast-rotating, highly-magnetised neutron stars that radiate across the electromagnetic spectrum. New discoveries by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) in the gamma-ray band since 2008, combined with the quality of new multi-frequency data, have caused a revolution in the field of gamma-ray rotation-powered pulsars. There are still many unsolved mysteries regarding the magnetospheric conditions in these stars – even after 50 years of research! This paper will relate several thoughts surrounding this field from a personal perspective that has taken shape over the past 15 years.