Fermi Discovery of Gamma-ray Emission from the Globular Cluster Terzan 5

Abstract

We report the discovery of gamma-ray emission from the Galactic globular cluster Terzan 5 using data taken with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, from 2008 August 8 to 2010 January 1. Terzan 5 is clearly detected in the 0.5-20 GeV band by Fermi at ~27σlevel. This makes Terzan 5 as the second gamma-ray emitting globular cluster seen by Fermi after 47 Tuc. The energy spectrum of Terzan 5 is best represented by an exponential cutoff power-law model, with a photon index of ~1.9 and a cutoff energy at ~3.8 GeV. By comparing to 47 Tuc, we suggest that the observed gamma-ray emission is associated with millisecond pulsars, and is either from the magnetospheres or inverse Compton scattering between the relativistic electrons/positrons in the pulsar winds and the background soft photons from the Galactic plane. Furthermore, it is suggestive that the distance to Terzan 5 is less than 10 kpc and > 10 GeV photons can be seen in the future.

4 pages, 2 figures; accepted for publication in ApJL

References in corpus (7)

• Fermi Large Area Telescope Bright Gamma-ray Source List
• The First Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-ray Pulsars
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• Distances of the bulge globular clusters Terzan 5, Liller 1, UKS 1 and Terzan 4 based on HST NICMOS photometry
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