Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userThe population of TeV pulsar wind nebulae in the H.E.S.S. Galactic Plane Survey
91
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
The nine-year H.E.S.S. Galactic Plane Survey (HGPS) yielded the most uniform observation scan of the inner Milky Way in the TeV gamma-ray band to date. The sky maps and source catalogue of the HGPS allow for a systematic study of the population of TeV pulsar wind nebulae found throughout the last decade. To investigate the nature and evolution of pulsar wind nebulae, for the first time we also present several upper limits for regions around pulsars without a detected TeV wind nebula. Our data exhibit a correlation of TeV surface brightness with pulsar spin-down power $dot{E}$. This seems to be caused both by an increase of extension with decreasing $dot{E}$, and hence with time, compatible with a power law $R_mathrm{PWN}(dot{E}) sim dot{E}^{-0.65 pm 0.20}$, and by a mild decrease of TeV gamma-ray luminosity with decreasing $dot{E}$, compatible with $L_{1-10,mathrm{TeV}} sim dot{E}^{0.59 pm 0.21}$. We also find that the offsets of pulsars with respect to the wind nebula centres with ages around 10 kyr are frequently larger than can be plausibly explained by pulsar proper motion and could be due to an asymmetric environment. In the present data, it seems that a large pulsar offset is correlated with a high apparent TeV efficiency $L_{1-10,mathrm{TeV}}/dot{E}$. In addition to 14 HGPS sources considered as firmly identified pulsar wind nebulae and 5 additional pulsar wind nebulae taken from literature, we find 10 HGPS sources that form likely TeV pulsar wind nebula candidates. Using a model that subsumes the present common understanding of the very high-energy radiative evolution of pulsar wind nebulae, we find that the trends and variations of the TeV observables and limits can be reproduced to a good level, drawing a consistent picture of present-day TeV data and theory.
rate research
Read More
The most numerous source class that emerged from the H.E.S.S. Galactic Plane Survey are Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe). The 2013 reanalysis of this survey, undertaken after almost 10 years of observations, provides us with the most sensitive and most complete census of gamma-ray PWNe to date. In addition to a uniform analysis of spectral and morphological parameters, for the first time also flux upper limits for energetic young pulsars were extracted from the data. We present a discussion of the correlation between energetic pulsars and TeV objects, and their respective properties. We will put the results in context with the current theoretical understanding of PWNe and evaluate the plausibility of previously non-established PWN candidates.
To investigate the nature and evolution of TeV pulsar wind nebulae, we examine the firmly identified PWNe in the H.E.S.S. Galactic Plane Survey, along with the few other known detections from the literature, as well as the upper limits extracted from the H.E.S.S survey. These data exhibit a correlation of TeV surface brightness with pulsar spin-down power. It appears to be caused by both an increase of TeV extension and a decrease of TeV luminosity with decreasing spin-down power. We also find that the offsets of pulsars with ages around 10 kyr with respect to the wind nebula centres are frequently larger than can be plausibly explained by pulsar proper motion and could be due to an asymmetric environment. These and other results will be presented and put to context with a basic modelling of TeV pulsar wind nebula evolution.
Pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) have been established as the most populous class of TeV gamma-ray emitters. Since launch, the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT)identified five high-energy (100MeV <E< 100 GeV) gamma-ray sources as PWNe, and detected a large number of PWNe candidates, all powered by young and energetic pulsars. The wealth of multi-wavelength data available and the new results provided by Fermi-LAT give us an opportunity to find new PWNe and to explore the radiative processes taking place in known ones. The TeV gamma-ray unidentifiedsources (UNIDs) are the best candidates for finding new PWNe. Using 45 months of Fermi-LAT data for energies above 10 GeV, an analysis was performed near the position of 58TeV PWNe and UNIDs within 5deg of the Galactic Plane to establish new constraints on PWNe properties and find new clues on the nature of UNIDs. Of the 58 sources, 30 were detected, and this work provides their gamma-rayfluxes for energies above 10 GeV. The spectral energy distributions (SED) andupper limits, in the multi-wavelength context, also provide new information on the source nature and can help distinguish between emission scenarios, i.e. between classification as a pulsar candidate or as a PWN candidate. Six new GeV PWNe candidates are described in detail and compared with existing models. A population study of GeV PWNe candidates as a function of the pulsar/PWN system characteristics is presented.
Diffuse gamma-ray emission has long been established as the most prominent feature in the GeV sky. Although the imaging atmospheric Cherenkov technique has been successful in revealing a large population of discrete TeV gamma-ray sources, a thorough investigation of diffuse emission at TeV energies is still pending. Data from the Galactic Plane Survey (GPS) obtained by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) have now achieved a sensitivity and coverage adequate for probing signatures of diffuse emission in the energy range of ~100 GeV to a few TeV. Gamma-rays are produced in cosmic-ray interactions with the interstellar medium (aka sea of cosmic rays) and in inverse Compton scattering on cosmic photon fields. This inevitably leads to guaranteed gamma-ray emission related to the gas content along the line-of-sight. Further contributions relate to those gamma-ray sources that fall below the current detection threshold and the aforementioned inverse Compton emission. Based on the H.E.S.S. GPS, we present the first observational assessment of diffuse TeV gamma-ray emission. The observation is compared with corresponding flux predictions based on the HI (LAB data) and CO (as a tracer of H2, NANTEN data) gas distributions. Consequences for unresolved source contributions and the anticipated level of inverse Compton emission are discussed.
In the last decade, ground-based Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes have discovered about 175 very-high-energy (VHE; $E >$ 100 GeV) gamma-ray sources, with more to follow with the development of H.E.S.S. II and CTA. Nearly 40 of these are confirmed pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe). We present results from a leptonic emission code that models the spectral energy density of a PWN by solving a Fokker-Planck-type transport equation and calculating inverse Compton and synchrotron emissivities. Although models such as these have been developed before, most of them model the geometry of a PWN as that of a single sphere. We have created a time-dependent, multi-zone model to investigate changes in the particle spectrum as the particles traverse through the PWN, by considering a time and spatially-dependent magnetic field, spatially-dependent bulk particle motion causing convection, diffusion, and energy losses (SR, IC and adiabatic). Our code predicts the radiation spectrum at different positions in the nebula, yielding novel results, e.g., the surface brightness versus the radius and the PWN size as function of energy. We calibrated our new model against more basic models using the observed spectrum of PWN G0.9+0.1, incorporating data from H.E.S.S. as well as radio and X-ray experiments. We fit our predicted radiation spectra to data from G21.5$-$0.9, G54.1+0.3, and HESS J1356$-$645 and found that our model yields reasonable results for young PWNe. We next performed a parameter study which gave significant insight into the behaviour of the PWN for different scenarios. Our model is now ready to be applied to a population of PWNe to probe possible trends such as the surface brightness as a function of spin-down of the pulsar.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
