Back to Search
Start Over
Potential PeVatron supernova remnant G106.3+2.7 seen in the highest-energy gamma rays
- Source :
- Nature Astronomy, 5, 460-464 (2021)
- Publication Year :
- 2021
-
Abstract
- Cosmic rays (protons and other atomic nuclei) are believed to gain energies of petaelectronvolts (PeV) and beyond at astrophysical particle accelerators called 'PeVatrons' inside our Galaxy. Although a characteristic feature of a PeVatron is expected to be a hard gamma-ray energy spectrum that extends beyond 100 teraelectronvolts (TeV) without a cutoff, none of the currently known sources exhibits such a spectrum due to the low maximum energy of accelerated cosmic rays or insufficient detector sensitivity around 100 TeV. Here we report the observation of gamma-ray emission from the supernova remnant G106.3+2.7 above 10 TeV. This work provides flux data points up to and above 100 TeV and indicates that the very-high-energy gamma-ray emission above 10 TeV is well correlated with a molecular cloud rather than the pulsar PSR J2229+6114. Regarding the gamma-ray emission mechanism of G106.3+2.7, this morphological feature appears to favor a hadronic origin via the {\pi}0 decay caused by accelerated relativistic protons over a leptonic one via the inverse-Compton scattering by relativistic electrons. Furthermore, we point out that an X-ray flux upper limit on the synchrotron spectrum would provide important information to firmly establish the hadronic scenario as the mechanism of particle acceleration at the source.<br />Comment: Published in Nature Astronomy
- Subjects :
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- arXiv
- Journal :
- Nature Astronomy, 5, 460-464 (2021)
- Publication Type :
- Report
- Accession number :
- edsarx.2109.02898
- Document Type :
- Working Paper
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-01294-9