Study of TeV shell supernova remnants at gamma-ray energies

Abstract

The breakthrough developments of Cherenkov telescopes in the last decade have led to angular resolution of 0.1° and an unprecedented sensitivity. This has allowed the current generation of Cherenkov telescopes to discover a population of supernova remnants (SNRs) radiating in very-high-energy (VHE, E>100 GeV) gamma-rays. A number of those VHE SNRs exhibit a shell-type morphology spatially coincident with the shock front of the SNR. The members of this VHE shell SNR club are RX J1713.7-3946, Vela Jr, RCW 86, SN 1006, and HESS J1731-347. The latter two objects have been poorly studied in high-energy (HE, 0.1<E<100 GeV) gamma-rays and need to be investigated in order to draw the global picture of this class of SNRs and constrain the characteristics of the underlying population of accelerated particles. Using 6 years of Fermi P7 reprocessed data, we studied the HE counterpart of the SNRs HESS J1731-347 and SN 1006. The two SNRs are not detected in the data and given that there is no hint of detection, we do not expect any detection in the coming years from the SNRs. However in both cases, we derived upper limits that significantly constrain the gamma-ray emission mechanism and can rule out a standard hadronic scenario with a confidence level > 5 sigma. With this Fermi analysis, we now have a complete view of the HE to VHE gamma-ray emission of TeV shell SNRs. All five sources have a hard HE photon index (<1.8) suggesting a common scenario where the bulk of the emission is produced by accelerated electrons radiating from radio to VHE gamma-rays through synchrotron and inverse Compton processes. In addition when correcting for the distance, all SNRs show a surprisingly similar gamma-ray luminosity supporting the idea of a common emission mechanism. While the gamma-ray emission is likely to be leptonic dominated, this does not rule out efficient hadron acceleration in those SNRs.

accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (19)

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• Observations of the young supernova remnant RX J1713.7-3946 with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
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• The gas density around SN 1006
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• Modeling the Multi-Wavelength Emission of Shell-Type Supernova Remnant RX J1713.7-3946
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• Probing The Local Environment of the Supernova Remnant HESS J1731-347 with CO and CS Observations
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• Detection of GeV $\gamma$-ray emission in the direction of HESS J1731-347 with Fermi-LAT
• XMM-Newton observations of the non-thermal supernova remnant HESS J1731-347 (G353.6-0.7)
• Detection of GeV Gamma-rays from HESS J1534-571 and Multiwavelength Implications for the Origin of the Non-thermal Emission
• XMM-Newton observation of the supernova remnant Kes 78 (G32.8-0.1): Evidence for shock-cloud interaction
• Evolution of High-Energy Particle Distribution in Mature Shell-Type Supernova Remnants
• Modeling the shock-cloud interaction in SN 1006: unveiling the origin of nonthermal X-ray and gamma-ray emission
• Expectation on Observation of Supernova Remnants with the LHAASO Project
• Constraining the coherence scale of the interstellar magnetic field using TeV gamma-ray observations of supernova remnants
• Characterization of the GeV emission from the Kepler supernova remnant
• Early-time gamma-ray constraints on cosmic-ray acceleration in the core-collapse SN 2023ixf with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Electron Acceleration in Middle-age Shell-type $\gamma$-Ray Supernova Remnants
• Fermi LAT detection of the supernova remnant SN 1006 revisited: the south-west limb
• Simulating TeV gamma-ray morphologies of shell-type supernova remnants
• Searching for an interstellar medium association for HESS J1534-571
• Modeling non-thermal emission from stellar bow shocks
• What causes the absence of pulsations in Central Compact Objects in Supernova Remnants?
• Supernova of 1006 (G327.6+14.6)
• Probing the origin of 4FGL J0822.8-4207: cosmic ray illumination from the SNR Puppis A and the Herbig-Haro object HH219
• Is the SNR HESS J1731-347 colliding with molecular clouds?
• A Supernova Remnant Counterpart for HESS J1832-085
• The TeV supernova remnant shell HESS J1731-347 and its surroundings
• The population of Galactic supernova remnants in the TeV range
• Hadronic particle acceleration in the supernova remnant SN 1006 as traced by Fermi-LAT observations
• Fermi-LAT detection of GeV $\gamma$-ray emission from Type Ia supernova remnant G272.2-3.2
• On the Cooling of Compact Stars in Light of the HESS J1731-347 Remnant