FERMI-LAT DISCOVERY OF GeV GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM THE YOUNG SUPERNOVA REMNANT CASSIOPEIA A

By A. Abdo, M. Ackermann, M. Ajello, A. Allafort, L. Baldini, J. Ballet, G. Barbiellini, M. Baring, D. Bastieri, B. Baughman and 162 more. 2010

145 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report on the first detection of GeV high-energy gamma-ray emission from a young supernova remnant (SNR) with the Large Area Telescope aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. These observations reveal a source with no discernible spatial extension detected at a significance level of 12.2σ above 500 MeV at a location that is consistent with the position of the remnant of the supernova explosion that occurred around 1680 in the Cassiopeia constellation—Cassiopeia A (Cas A). The gamma-ray flux and spectral shape of the source are consistent with a scenario in which the gamma-ray emission originates from relativistic particles accelerated in the shell of this remnant. The total content of cosmic rays (electrons and protons) accelerated in Cas A can be estimated as WCR ≃ (1–4) × 1049 erg thanks to the well-known density in the remnant assuming that the observed gamma ray originates in the SNR shell(s). The magnetic field in the radio-emitting plasma can be robustly constrained as B ⩾ 0.1 mG, providing new evidence of the magnetic field amplification at the forward shock and the strong field in the shocked ejecta.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f58a4066b54d6b3f106e14408878df6d1e3f71da

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Citations in the corpus

OBSERVATIONS OF THE YOUNG SUPERNOVA REMNANT RX J1713.7−3946 WITH THE FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE (2011, background): “In particular, X-ray and TeV gamma-ray43 observations of young SNRs such as Cas A (Hwang et al. 2004; Gotthelf et al. 2001; Albert44 et al. 2007; Abdo et al. 2010b), or RX J1713.”
Magnetic Fields in Supernova Remnants and Pulsar-Wind Nebulae (2011, methodology): “8 Spectrum of GeV emission from Cas A as seen by Fermi (Abdo et al. 2010a).”
The Search for Spatial Extension in High-latitude Sources Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (2018, background): “At higher latitudes, extended sources are generally galaxies: for example, the Magellanic Clouds, the lobes of Centaurus A, and Fornax A.”
THE FIRST FERMI LAT SUPERNOVA REMNANT CATALOG (2015, background): “…so we compared our results to the fluxes, indices, localizations, and extensions for extended sources that were reported in these publications (Abdo et al. 2010d; Lande et al. 2012; Castro & Slane 2010; Abdo et al. 2010c,e,f; Giordano et al. 2012; Katsuta et al. 2012; Brandt & Fermi-LAT…”
FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE FIRST SOURCE CATALOG (2010, methodology): “The association between GeV γ-ray PSRs and the PWNs visible in TeV γ-rays seems well established, as has already been discussed in Abdo et al. (2010m).”
THE SECOND FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE CATALOG OF GAMMA-RAY PULSARS (2013, background): “The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope did not just confirm the expectation: by discovering dozens of radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsars and millisecond pulsars (MSPs, thought to be old pulsars spun up to rapid periods via accretion from a companion, Alpar et al. 1982), the”
Strong evidence for hadron acceleration in Tycho’s supernova remnant (2011, background): “…mechanism which may be relevant for the gamma-ray emission from SNRs is the relativistic bremsstrahlung of accelerated electrons which, always coupled with ICS, has been proposed as a viable alternative to the hadronic scenario to explain for instance the spectrum of Cas A (Abdo et al., 2010).”