English

Constraints on very high energy gamma-ray emission from the Fermi Bubbles with future ground-based experiments

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2019-04-17 v2

Abstract

The origin of sub-TeV gamma rays detected by the \textit{Fermi}-Large Area Telescope (LAT) from the \textit{Fermi} Bubbles (FBs) at the Galactic center is still uncertain. In a hadronic model, acceleration of protons and/or nuclei and their subsequent interactions with gas in the bubble volume can produce the observed gamma rays. Recently the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory reported an absence of gamma-ray excess from the Northern FB at b6b\gtrsim 6^\circ Galactic latitude, which resulted in flux upper limits in the energy range of 1.21261.2-126 TeV. These upper limits are consistent with the gamma-ray spectrum measured by \textit{Fermi}-LAT at b10|b|\ge 10^\circ, where an exponential cutoff at energies 100\gtrsim 100 GeV is evident. However, the FB gamma-ray spectrum at b10|b|\le 10^\circ, without showing any sign of cutoff up to around 1 TeV in the latest results, remains unconstrained. The upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will perform a Galactic center survey with unprecedented sensitivity in the energy between 20 GeV and 300 TeV. In this work, we perform both morphological and classic on/off analyses with planned CTA deep central and extended survey and estimate the sensitivity of CTA to the FB hadronic gamma-ray flux models that best fit the spectrum at b10|b|\le 10^\circ and whose counterpart neutrino flux model best fits the optimistic neutrino spectrum from IceCube Neutrino Observatory. We also perform sensitivity analysis with a future ground-based Cherenkov detector the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO). We find that CTA will be able to discover or constrain the FB gamma-ray flux at b10|b|\le 10^\circ in the \approx 200 GeV -- 100 TeV range with planned observation strategy, while LHAASO may constrain emission in the 100\approx 100~GeV -- 100~TeV range if 10%\lesssim 10\% systematic uncertainties can be achieved.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1811.10970,
  title  = {Constraints on very high energy gamma-ray emission from the Fermi Bubbles with future ground-based experiments},
  author = {Lili Yang and Soebur Razzaque},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.10970},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

10 pages, 7 figures. This paper has gone through internal review by the CTA Consortium and has been accepted for publication in PRD