Abstract
Pulsar systems accelerate particles to immense energies. The detailed
functioning of these engines is still poorly understood, but polarization
measurements of high-energy radiation may allow us to locate where
the particles are accelerated. We have detected polarized gamma rays
from the vicinity of the Crab pulsar using data from the spectrometer
on the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory satellite.
Our results show polarization with an electric vector aligned with
the spin axis of the neutron star, demonstrating that a substantial
fraction of the high-energy electrons responsible for the polarized
photons are produced in a highly ordered structure close to the pulsar.
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