Related papers: Gamma rays from molecular clouds
Pulsars are factories of relativistic electrons and positrons that propagate away from the pulsar, permeating later our Galaxy. The acceleration and propagation of these particles are a matter of intense debate. In the last few years, we…
The escape of cosmic rays from the Galaxy is expected to shape their spectrum inside the Galaxy. Yet, this phenomenon is very poorly understood and, in the absence of a physical description, it is usually modelled as free escape from a…
Massive stars blow powerful winds and eventually explode as supernovae. By doing so, they inject energy and momentum in the circumstellar medium, which is pushed away from the star and piles up to form a dense and expanding shell of gas.…
High-energy gamma rays of interstellar origin are produced by the interaction of cosmic-ray (CR) particles with the diffuse gas and radiation fields in the Galaxy. The main features of this emission are well understood and are reproduced by…
For about two decades, a population of relative small and nearby molecular clouds has been known to exist at high Galactic latitudes. Lying more than 10$^\circ$ from the Galactic plane, these clouds have typical distances of $\sim$150 pc,…
Diffusive shock acceleration operating at expanding supernova remnant shells is by far the most popular model for the origin of galactic cosmic rays. Despite the general consensus received by this model, an unambiguous and conclusive proof…
We analyze the gamma-ray emission from 9 high latitude, translucent molecular clouds taken with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) between 250 MeV and 10 GeV. Observations of gamma-rays allow us to probe the density and spectrum of cosmic…
The Fermi satellite has recently detected gamma ray emission from the central regions of our Galaxy. This may be evidence for dark matter particles, a major component of the standard cosmological model, annihilating to produce high-energy…
Recent EGRET observations of the diffuse Galactic gamma-ray emission reveal a spectrum which is incompatible with the assumption that the cosmic ray spectra measured locally hold throughout the Galaxy: the spectrum above 1 GeV, where the…
It appears that the majority of rapidly-, well-localized gamma-ray bursts with undetected, or dark, optical afterglows, or `dark bursts' for short, occur in clouds of size R > 10L_{49}^{1/2} pc and mass M > 3x10^5L_{49} M_{sun}, where L is…
Cosmic rays are charged energetic particles that permeate the interstellar medium. Their sizeable energy share and penetration power makes them essential players in the dynamical and chemical processes that rule Galactic evolution, such as…
We reported the gamma-ray observation towards the giant molecular cloud Polaris Flare. Together with the dust column density map, we derived the cosmic ray density and spectrum in this cloud. Compared with the CR measured locally, the CR…
The diffuse galactic gamma-ray spectrum measured by the EGRET experiment \citep{Hunter:1997} are interpreted within a scenario in which cosmic rays (CRs) are injected by three different kind of sources, (i) supernovae (SN) which explode…
The gamma-ray background is still a subject under great debate. All phenomena in the universe emitting gamma-rays can contribute directly as diffuse emission or as an isotropic component from unresolved point sources. The question of the…
Interaction of cosmological gamma ray burst radiation with the dense interstellar medium of host galaxy is considered. Gas dynamical motion of interstellar medium driven by gamma ray burst is investigated in 2D approximation for different…
The universe is filled with a diffuse and isotropic extragalactic background of gamma-ray radiation, containing roughly equal energy flux per decade in photon energy between 3 MeV-100 GeV. The origin of this background is one of the…
The origin of galactic cosmic rays is one of the most interesting unsolved problems in astroparticle physics. Experimentally, the problem is attacked by a multi-disciplinary effort, namely by direct measurements of cosmic rays above the…
(Abridged) The inner couple hundred pcs of our Galaxy is characterized by significant amount of synchrotron-emitting gas, which appears to co-exist with a large reservoir of molecular gas. The spatial correlation between fluorescent Fe…
The origin of the extragalactic gamma-ray background is a pressing cosmological mystery. The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope has recently measured the intensity and spectrum of this background; both are substantially different from previous…
This paper presents an introduction to the astrophysics of cosmic rays and diffuse gamma rays and discusses some of the puzzles that have emerged recently due to more precise data and improved propagation models: the excesses in Galactic…