A Systematic Study of Gamma-Ray Flares from the Crab Nebula with Fermi-LAT. I. Flare Detection

Significant flares of GeV gamma-ray emission from the Crab Nebula were found by AGILE and Fermi-LAT years ago, indicating that extreme particle acceleration and radiation occurs in young pulsar wind nebulae. To enlarge the flare sample and to investigate their statistical properties will be very useful in understanding the nature of the gamma-ray flares. In this paper, we investigate the flaring emission from the Crab Nebula with eleven year observations of the Fermi-LAT. We identify 17 significant flares in the light curve of the low-energy (synchrotron) component of the gamma-ray emission. The flare rate is about 1.5 per year, without any significant change or clustering during the 11 years of the observation. We detect a special flare with an extremely long duration of nearly one month, that occurred in 2018 October, with synchrotron photons up to energies of about 1 GeV. The synchrotron component could be fitted by a steady power-law (PL) background and a variable flare component with an exponentially cutoff PL spectrum, not only for the individual flare but also for the combined data, which may favor a similar emission mechanism for all flares. However, we do not find a universal relation between the cutoff energy and the energy fluxes of the flares, which may reflect the complicated acceleration and/or cooling processes of the involved particles.

Automated summary

This study investigates the flaring emission from the Crab Nebula using eleven years of observations from Fermi-LAT, identifying 17 significant flares with one lasting nearly a month. The flare rate is approximately 1.5 per year, with no significant changes or clustering observed. The presence of a special flare with an extremely long duration in 2018 October is highlighted, providing insights into the nature of gamma-ray flares in young pulsar wind nebulae.