Matthias Kerschhaggl Humboldt Universität Berlin

Very High Gamma-Ray Emission from the Binary Pulsar PSR B1259-63 around Periastron as Discovered by HESS (pdf)

This talk will give a brief report about the VHE gamma ray emission of the binary system PSR B1259-63/SS 2883 as discovered by the HESS experiment in 2004. HESS is an array of 4 imaging Cherenkov telescopes situated in Namibia. PSR B1259-63 represents a system where a radio pulsar is orbiting a massive Be star in a highly eccentric orbit. From this source a gamma ray signal with a total significance of 13 sigma could be detected within a live time of 49.8h. The flux was found to vary on a timescale of days which made PSR B1259-63 the first variable galactic source detected in the VHE gamma ray regime. The talk will focus on the detection technique used by HESS, the analysis of the data and its interpretation. With the example of PSR B1259-63 at hand, interesting mechanisms for the generation of VHE gamma rays will be presented.