2014/06/09 by T. Ergin, Tülün Ergin, A. Sezer +11
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope #Gamma ray #Near-Earth supernova #Plasma #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Supernova #Supernova remnant #Telescope #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/790/1/65
published as ApJ, Vol. 790, 65 (2014) · 10 pages, 7 figures; accepted by ApJ
arxiv created 2014/06/09 · openalex publication_date 2014/07/03 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · arxiv updated 2018/03/08 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A group of middle-aged mixed-morphology (MM) supernova remnants (SNRs) interacting with molecular clouds (MCs) has been discovered to be strong GeV gamma-ray emitters by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope ( Fermi -LAT). The recent observations of the Suzaku X-ray satellite have revealed that some of these interacting gamma-ray-emitting SNRs, such as IC443, W49B, W44, and G359.1–0.5, have overionized plasmas. 3C 391 (G31.9+0.0) is another Galactic MM SNR interacting with MCs. It was observed in GeV gamma rays by Fermi -LAT as well as in the 0.3–10.0 keV X-ray band by Suzaku . In this work, 3C 391 was detected in GeV gamma rays with a significance of ∼18σ and we showed that the GeV emission is point-like in nature. The GeV gamma-ray spectrum was shown to be best explained by the decay of neutral pions assuming that the protons follow a broken power-law distribution. We revealed radiative recombination structures of silicon and sulfur from 3C 391 using Suzaku data. In this paper, we discuss the possible origin of this type of radiative plasma and hadronic gamma rays.