Discovery of the hard spectrum VHE gamma-ray source HESS J1641-463

Abstract

This letter reports the discovery of a remarkably hard spectrum source, HESS J1641-463, by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) in the very-high energy (VHE) domain. HESS J1641-463 remained unnoticed by the usual analysis techniques due to confusion with the bright nearby source HESS J1640-465. It emerged at a significance level of 8.5 standard deviations after restricting the analysis to events with energies above 4 TeV. It shows a moderate flux level of F(E > 1 TeV) = (3.64 +/- 0.44_stat +/- 0.73_sys) x 10^-13 cm^-2s-1, corresponding to 1.8% of the Crab Nebula flux above the same energy, and a hard spectrum with a photon index of Gamma = 2.07 +/- 0.11_stat +/- 0.20_sys. It is a point-like source, although an extension up to Gaussian width of sigma = 3 arcmin cannot be discounted due to uncertainties in the H.E.S.S. PSF. The VHE gamma-ray flux of HESS J1641-463 is found to be constant over the observed period when checking time binnings from year-by-year to the 28 min exposures timescales. HESS J1641-463 is positionally coincident with the radio supernova remnant SNR G338.5+0.1. No X-ray candidate stands out as a clear association, however Chandra and XMM-Newton data reveal some potential weak counterparts. Various VHE gamma-ray production scenarios are discussed. If the emission from HESS J1641-463 is produced by cosmic ray protons colliding with the ambient gas, then their spectrum must extend close to 1 PeV. This object may represent a source population contributing significantly to the galactic cosmic ray flux around the knee.

24 pages, 4 figures. Published version

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Cited by in corpus (18)

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• Interstellar gas towards the TeV gamma-ray sources HESS J1640-465 and HESS J1641-463
• Using Interstellar Clouds to Search for Galactic PeVatrons: Gamma-ray Signatures from Supernova Remnants
• Analysis of the TiO isotopologues in stellar optical spectra
• An extreme particle accelerator in the Galactic plane: HESS J1826$-$130
• Dense molecular gas at 12 mm towards Galactic TeV gamma-ray sources
• Ultra-High-Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy
• HESS J1640-465 and HESS J1641-463: two intriguing TeV sources in the light of new Fermi LAT observations
• Constraining the origin of the puzzling source HESS J1640-465 and the PeVatron candidate HESS J1641-463 using Fermi-LAT observations
• Study of maximum electron energy of sub-PeV pulsar wind nebulae by multiwavelength modelling
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• Exploring the possible gluon condensation signature in gamma-ray emission from pulsars
• Detection of Cosmic Rays from ground: an Introduction
• H.E.S.S.: The High Energy Stereoscopic System
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