The supernova remnant W49B as seen with HESS and Fermi-LATShow others and affiliations
Number of Authors: 2542018 (English)In: Astronomy and Astrophysics, ISSN 0004-6361, E-ISSN 1432-0746, Vol. 612, article id A5Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
The supernova remnant (SNR) W49B originated from a core-collapse supernova that occurred between one and four thousand years ago, and subsequently evolved into a mixed-morphology remnant, which is interacting with molecular clouds (MC). Gamma-ray observations of SNR-MC associations are a powerful tool to constrain the origin of Galactic cosmic rays, as they can probe the acceleration of hadrons through their interaction with the surrounding medium and subsequent emission of non-thermal photons. We report the detection of a gamma-ray source coincident with W49B at very high energies (VHE; E > 100 GeV) with the H.E.S.S. Cherenkov telescopes together with a study of the source with five years of Fermi-LAT high-energy gamma-ray (0.06-300 GeV) data. The smoothly connected, combined source spectrum, measured from 60 MeV to multi-TeV energies, shows two significant spectral breaks at 304 +/- 20 MeV and 8.4(-2.5)(+2.5) GeV; the latter is constrained by the joint fit from the two instruments. The detected spectral features are similar to those observed in several other SNR-MC associations and are found to be indicative of gamma-ray emission produced through neutral-pion decay.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2018. Vol. 612, article id A5
Keywords [en]
gamma rays: general, ISM: supernova remnants, ISM: clouds
National Category
Physical Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-155941DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201527843ISI: 000429404700005Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85045418660OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-155941DiVA, id: diva2:1215493
2018-06-082018-06-082022-10-26Bibliographically approved