Gamma-rays and neutrinos from dense environment of massive binary systems in open clusters

Abstract

TeV gamma-ray emission has been recently observed from direction of a few open clusters containing massive stars. We consider the high energy processes occurring within massive binary systems and in their dense environment by assuming that nuclei, from the stellar winds of massive stars, are accelerated at the collision region of the stellar winds. We calculate the rates of injection of protons and neutrons from fragmentation of these nuclei in collisions with stellar radiation and matter of the winds from the massive companions in binary system. Protons and neutrons can interact with the matter, within the stellar wind cavity and within the open cluster, producing pions which decay into $\gamma$-rays and neutrinos. We discuss the detectability of such $\gamma$-ray emission by the present and future Cherenkov telescopes for the case of two binary systems Eta Carinae, within the Carina Nebula, and WR 20a, within the Westerlund 2 open cluster. We also calculate the neutrino fluxes produced by protons around the binary systems and within the open clusters. This neutrino emission is confronted with ANTARES upper limits on the neutrino fluxes from discrete sources and with the sensitivity of IceCube.

15 pages, 9 figures, accepted to Physical Review D

References in corpus (12)

• Fermi Large Area Telescope Bright Gamma-ray Source List
• Measurement of the atmospheric neutrino energy spectrum from 100 GeV to 400 TeV with IceCube
• Radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray Emission Models of the Colliding Winds Binary WR 140
• Detection of extended very-high-energy gamma-ray emission towards the young stellar cluster Westerlund 2
• Detection of Gamma-ray Emission from the Eta-Carinae Region
• Observations of the unidentified gamma-ray source TeV J2032+4130 by VERITAS
• Jet models for black-hole binaries in the hard spectral state
• Search for Galactic PeV Gamma Rays with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• Gamma-ray follow-up studies on Eta Carinae
• Gamma-ray emission from the Westerlund 1 region
• TeV gamma-rays from photo-disintegration/de-excitation of cosmic-ray nuclei
• Gamma-Ray Emission from PWNe Interacting with Molecular Clouds

Cited by in corpus (4)

• A VLT/FLAMES survey for massive binaries in Westerlund 1: VII. Cluster census
• Probing the hadronic nature of the gamma-ray emission associated with Westerlund 2
• A lepto-hadronic model of gamma rays from the Eta Carinae and prospects for neutrino telescopes
• Searching for a Galactic component in the IceCube track-like neutrino events