Potential PeVatron supernova remnant G106.3+2.7 seen in the highest-energy gamma rays
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.
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@article{arxiv.2109.02898,
title = {Potential PeVatron supernova remnant G106.3+2.7 seen in the highest-energy gamma rays},
author = {M. Amenomori and Y. W. Bao and X. J. Bi and D. Chen and T. L. Chen and W. Y. Chen and Xu Chen and Y. Chen and Cirennima and S. W. Cui and Danzengluobu and L. K. Ding and J. H. Fang and K. Fang and C. F. Feng and Zhaoyang Feng and Z. Y. Feng and Qi Gao and Q. B. Gou and Y. Q. Guo and Y. Y. Guo and H. H. He and Z. T. He and K. Hibino and N. Hotta and Haibing Hu and H. B. Hu and J. Huang and H. Y. Jia and L. Jiang and H. B. Jin and K. Kasahara and Y. Katayose and C. Kato and S. Kato and K. Kawata and W. Kihara and Y. Ko and M. Kozai and Labaciren and G. M. Le and A. F. Li and H. J. Li and W. J. Li and Y. H. Lin and B. Liu and C. Liu and J. S. Liu and M. Y. Liu and W. Liu and Y. -Q. Lou and H. Lu and X. R. Meng and K. Munakata and H. Nakada and Y. Nakamura and H. Nanjo and M. Nishizawa and M. Ohnishi and T. Ohura and S. Ozawa and X. L. Qian and X. B. Qu and T. Saito and M. Sakata and T. K. Sako and J. Shao and M. Shibata and A. Shiomi and H. Sugimoto and W. Takano and M. Takita and Y. H. Tan and N. Tateyama and S. Torii and H. Tsuchiya and S. Udo and H. Wang and H. R. Wu and L. Xue and Y. Yamamoto and Z. Yang and Y. Yokoe and A. F. Yuan and L. M. Zhai and H. M. Zhang and J. L. Zhang and X. Zhang and X. Y. Zhang and Y. Zhang and Yi Zhang and Ying Zhang and S. P. Zhao and Zhaxisangzhu and X. X. Zhou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.02898},
year = {2021}
}
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Published in Nature Astronomy