Gamma-ray binaries and related systems
By G. Dubus. 2013
221 citations recorded by the source corpus.
After initial claims and a long hiatus, it is now established that several binary stars emit high- (0.1–100 GeV) and very high-energy (>100 GeV) gamma rays. A new class has emerged called “gamma-ray binaries”, since most of their radiated power is emitted beyond 1 MeV. Accreting X-ray binaries, novae and a colliding wind binary (η Car) have also been detected—“related systems” that confirm the ubiquity of particle acceleration in astrophysical sources. Do these systems have anything in common? What drives their high-energy emission? How do the processes involved compare to those in other sources of gamma rays: pulsars, active galactic nuclei, supernova remnants? I review the wealth of observational and theoretical work that have followed these detections, with an emphasis on gamma-ray binaries. I present the current evidence that gamma-ray binaries are driven by rotation-powered pulsars. Binaries are laboratories giving access to different vantage points or physical conditions on a regular timescale as the components revolve on their orbit. I explain the basic ingredients that models of gamma-ray binaries use, the challenges that they currently face, and how they can bring insights into the physics of pulsars. I discuss how gamma-ray emission from microquasars provides a window into the connection between accretion–ejection and acceleration, while η Car and novae raise new questions on the physics of these objects—or on the theory of diffusive shock acceleration. Indeed, explaining the gamma-ray emission from binaries strains our theories of high-energy astrophysical processes, by testing them on scales and in environments that were generally not foreseen, and this is how these detections are most valuable.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f45ecb8f0ffca35a2b6c46e827e576757b8b680a
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- Fast radio bursts at the dawn of the 2020s (2021, unknown): “At typical observing frequencies of 1:4 GHz these studies are limited by the Milky Way foreground, which imparts at least tens of nanoseconds of temporal broadening due to scattering for most lines of sight.”
- High-mass X-ray binaries in the Milky Way (2013, background): “…energy emission and variability patterns are very different from those described above and dominated by inverse Compton scattering of electron accelerated close to the black-hole or in the interaction regions between the companion stellar winds and pulsar winds or microquasar jets (Dubus, 2013).”