2012/01/31 by A. Neronov, D. Semikoz, D. V. Semikoz · 19 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Cosmic ray #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Degree (music) #Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope #Galaxy #Gamma ray #Interstellar medium #Neutrino #Neutrino Physics Research #Nuclear physics #Physics #Pulsar #Supernova #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.85.083008
published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 85(8) (American Physical Society) · 14 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.D
arxiv created 2012/04/17 · openalex publication_date 2012/04/25 · arxiv updated 2013/05/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider a possibility of identification of sources of cosmic rays (CR) of the energy above 1 TeV via observation of degree-scale extended \ensuremathγ-ray emission which traces the locations of recent sources in the Galaxy. Such emission in the energy band above 100 GeV is produced by CR nuclei and electrons released by the sources and spreading into the interstellar medium. We use the data from the Fermi \ensuremathγ-ray telescope to locate the degree-scale 100 GeV \ensuremathγ-ray sources. We find that the number of such sources and their overall power match to those expected when CRs injection events happen every \ensuremath∼100 yr in portions of \ensuremath∼1050 erg. We find that most of the sources are associated to pulsars with spin-down age less than \ensuremath∼30 kyr and hence to the recent supernova explosions. This supports the hypothesis of supernova origin of Galactic CRs. We notice that the degree-scale extended emission does not surround shell-like supernova remnants without pulsars. Based on this observation, we argue that the presence of the pulsar is essential for the CR acceleration process. We expect that a significant fraction of the degree-scale sources should be detectable as extended sources with km3-scale neutrino detectors.