2010/08/31 by Roland M. Crocker, F. Aharonian, Felix Aharonian · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #COSMIC cancer database #Center (category theory) #Cosmic ray #Cosmic ray spallation #Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope #Galactic Center #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Physics #Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.106.101102
published as Phys.Rev.Lett.106:101102,2011 · Accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.Lett. 4 pages, 2 figures, brief textual revisions, conclusions unchanged
arxiv created 2011/02/14 · openalex publication_date 2011/03/11 · arxiv updated 2011/03/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Recently evidence has emerged for enormous features in the γ-ray sky observed by the Fermi-LAT instrument: bilateral "bubbles" of emission centered on the core of the Galaxy and extending to around ± 10 kpc from the Galactic plane. These structures are coincident with a nonthermal microwave "haze" and an extended region of x-ray emission. The bubbles' γ-ray emission is characterized by a hard and relatively uniform spectrum, relatively uniform intensity, and an overall luminosity 4×10(37) erg/s, around 1 order of magnitude larger than their microwave luminosity while more than order of magnitude less than their x-ray luminosity. Here we show that the bubbles are naturally explained as due to a population of relic cosmic ray protons and heavier ions injected by processes associated with extremely long time scale (≳ 8 Gyr) and high areal density star formation in the Galactic center.