HESS J1640-465 - an exceptionally luminous TeV gamma-ray supernova remnant

Abstract

The results of follow-up observations of the TeV gamma-ray source HESSJ 1640-465 from 2004 to 2011 with the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) are reported in this work. The spectrum is well described by an exponential cut-off power law with photon index Gamma=2.11 +/- 0.09_stat +/- 0.10_sys, and a cut-off energy of E_c = (6.0 +2.0 -1.2) TeV. The TeV emission is significantly extended and overlaps with the north-western part of the shell of the SNR G338.3-0.0. The new H.E.S.S. results, a re-analysis of archival XMM-Newton data, and multi-wavelength observations suggest that a significant part of the gamma-ray emission from HESS J1640-465 originates in the SNR shell. In a hadronic scenario, as suggested by the smooth connection of the GeV and TeV spectra, the product of total proton energy and mean target density could be as high as W_p n_H ~ 4 x 10^52 (d/10kpc)^2 erg cm^-3.

accepted for publication in MNRAS, 9 pages, 5 figures, added Spitzer citation and acknowledgement

References in corpus (10)

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• Teraelectronvolt Astronomy
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Cited by in corpus (21)

• The H.E.S.S. Galactic plane survey
• The population of TeV pulsar wind nebulae in the H.E.S.S. Galactic Plane Survey
• The exceptionally powerful TeV gamma-ray emitters in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The soft gamma-ray pulsar population: an high-energy overview
• Pulsar-wind nebulae and magnetar outflows: observations at radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray wavelengths
• NuSTAR Discovery of a Young, Energetic Pulsar Associated with the Luminous Gamma-ray Source HESS J1640-465
• A deep spectromorphological study of the $\gamma$-ray emission surrounding the young massive stellar cluster Westerlund 1
• Discovery of the hard spectrum VHE gamma-ray source HESS J1641-463
• Constraints on axion-like particle properties with very high energy gamma-ray observations of Galactic sources
• Sensitivity of the Cherenkov Telescope Array to spectral signatures of hadronic PeVatrons with application to Galactic Supernova Remnants
• Interstellar gas towards the TeV gamma-ray sources HESS J1640-465 and HESS J1641-463
• HESS J1640-465 -- a Gamma-ray emitting pulsar wind nebula ?
• HESS J1640-465 and HESS J1641-463: two intriguing TeV sources in the light of new Fermi LAT observations
• LMC N132D: A mature supernova remnant with a power-law gamma-ray spectrum extending beyond 8 TeV
• Possible contribution of X-ray binary jets to the Galactic cosmic ray and neutrino flux
• Constraining the origin of the puzzling source HESS J1640-465 and the PeVatron candidate HESS J1641-463 using Fermi-LAT observations
• The environment of the gamma-ray emitting SNR G338.3-0.0: a hadronic interpretation for HESS J1640-465
• A Self-Consistent Explanation of TeV Emissions from HESS J1640-465 and HESS J1641-463
• Study of maximum electron energy of sub-PeV pulsar wind nebulae by multiwavelength modelling
• Exploring the high energy frontiers of the Milky Way with ground-based gamma-ray astronomy: PeVatrons and the quest for the origin of Galactic cosmic-rays
• The expected potential of hadronic PeVatron searches with spectral $\gamma$-ray data from the Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory