English

A gamma-ray periodic modulation in Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2020-12-03 v2

Abstract

The Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae was firstly detected in gamma-rays by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard the \emph{Fermi} Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and the gamma-ray emission has been widely attributed to the millisecond pulsars. In this work, we analyze the Fermi-LAT pass 8 data ranging from 2008 August to 2017 May and report the detection of a modulation with a period of 18.416±0.00818.416\pm0.008 hours at a significance level of 4.8σ\sim 4.8\sigma. This is the first time to detect a significant modulation with a period much longer than that of millisecond pulsars in gamma-rays from Globular Clusters. The periodic modulation signal appears in the {\it Swift}-BAT data as well. The phase-folded Chandra X-ray light curve of a point source may have provided an additional clue.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1810.10651,
  title  = {A gamma-ray periodic modulation in Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae},
  author = {Peng-Fei Zhang and Jia-Neng Zhou and Da-Hai Yan and Jing-Zhi Yan and Yi-Zhong Fan and Jun Fang and Li Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.10651},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

7 pages, 6 figures. Comments welcome