Deep observation of the NGC 1275 region with MAGIC: search of diffuse gamma-ray emission from cosmic rays in the Perseus cluster

Abstract

Clusters of galaxies are expected to be reservoirs of cosmic rays (CRs) that should produce diffuse gamma-ray emission due to their hadronic interactions with the intra-cluster medium. The nearby Perseus cool-core cluster, identified as the most promising target to search for such an emission, has been observed with the MAGIC telescopes at very-high energies (VHE, E>100 GeV) for a total of 253 hr from 2009 to 2014. The active nuclei of NGC 1275, the central dominant galaxy of the cluster, and IC 310, lying at about 0.6${}^{\circ }$ from the centre, have been detected as point-like VHE gamma-ray emitters during the first phase of this campaign. We report an updated measurement of the NGC 1275 spectrum, which is well described by a power law with a photon index of $3.6\pm 0.2_{stat}\pm 0.2_{syst}$ between 90 GeV and 1.2 TeV. We do not detect any diffuse gamma-ray emission from the cluster and set stringent constraints on its CR population. In order to bracket the uncertainties over the CR spatial and spectral distributions, we adopt different spatial templates and power-law spectral indexes $\alpha$. For $\alpha =2.2$, the CR-to-thermal pressure within the cluster virial radius is constrained to be below 1-2%, except if CRs can propagate out of the cluster core, generating a flatter radial distribution and releasing the CR-to-thermal pressure constraint to <20%. Assuming that the observed radio mini-halo of Perseus is generated by secondary electrons from CR hadronic interactions, we can derive lower limits on the central magnetic field, $B_0$, that depend on the CR distribution. For $\alpha =2.2$, $B_0\gtrsim 5-8\mu$G, which is below the 25 $\mu$G inferred from Faraday rotation measurements, whereas, for $\alpha \lesssim 2.1$, the hadronic interpretation of the diffuse radio emission is in contrast with our gamma-ray flux upper limits independently of the magnetic field strength.

13 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Section 3. Cosmology (including clusters of galaxies) of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Corresponding authors: P. Colin ([email protected]) and F. Zandanel ([email protected])

References in corpus (25)

• The major upgrade of the MAGIC telescopes, Part II: A performance study using observations of the Crab Nebula
• Compressible Turbulence in Galaxy Clusters: Physics and Stochastic Particle Re-acceleration
• Lower limit on the strength and filling factor of extragalactic magnetic fields
• The major upgrade of the MAGIC telescopes, Part I: The hardware improvements and the commissioning of the system
• NuSTAR Observations of the Bullet Cluster: Constraints on Inverse Compton Emission
• Implementation of the Random Forest Method for the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope MAGIC
• Simulating cosmic rays in clusters of galaxies - II. A unified scheme for radio halos and relics with predictions of the gamma-ray emission
• Cosmic ray physics in calculations of cosmological structure formation
• Magnetic Fields in the Center of the Perseus Cluster
• Turbulence and Particle Acceleration in Giant Radio Haloes: the Origin of Seed Electrons
• Cosmological MHD simulation of a cooling flow cluster
• Galaxy Clusters in the Swift/BAT era: Hard X-rays in the ICM
• Gamma rays from clusters of galaxies
• The Matryoshka Run (II): Time Dependent Turbulence Statistics, Stochastic Particle Acceleration and Microphysics Impact in a Massive Galaxy Cluster
• Constraining Extended Gamma-ray Emission from Galaxy Clusters
• Simulating cosmic rays in clusters of galaxies - III. Non-thermal scaling relations and comparison to observations
• Nonthermal phenomena in clusters of galaxies
• High-energy gamma-ray and neutrino backgrounds from clusters of galaxies and radio constraints
• TeV Gamma-Ray Observations of the Perseus and Abell 2029 Galaxy Clusters
• The Effect of Nonlinear Landau Damping on Ultrarelativistic Beam Plasma Instabilities
• A NuSTAR observation of the center of the Coma Cluster
• Testing Secondary Models for the Origin of Radio Mini-Halos in Galaxy Clusters
• New Limits On Gamma-Ray Emission From Galaxy Clusters
• Discovery of gamma-ray emission from the extragalactic pulsar wind nebula N157B with the High Energy Stereoscopic System
• The Swift BAT Perspective on Non-thermal Emission in HIFLUGCS Galaxy Clusters

Cited by in corpus (36)

• Diffuse Radio Emission from Galaxy Clusters
• Turbulence and Particle Acceleration in Giant Radio Haloes: the Origin of Seed Electrons
• Relativistic protons in the Coma galaxy cluster: first gamma-ray constraints ever on turbulent reacceleration
• Performance of the MAGIC telescopes under moonlight
• Indirect dark matter searches in Gamma- and Cosmic Rays
• A Search for Dark Matter Annihilation in Galaxy Groups
• On the impact of magnetic-field models in galaxy clusters on constraints on axion-like particles from the lack of irregularities in high-energy spectra of astrophysical sources
• Gamma-ray flaring activity of NGC 1275 in 2016-2017 measured by MAGIC
• Mapping Extragalactic Dark Matter Annihilation with Galaxy Surveys: A Systematic Study of Stacked Group Searches
• Constraining Dark Matter lifetime with a deep gamma-ray survey of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster with MAGIC
• Cross-correlating the gamma-ray sky with catalogs of galaxy clusters
• Recent Progress in Modeling the Macro- and Micro-Physics of Radio Jet Feedback in Galaxy Clusters
• On the relation between mini-halos and AGN feedback in clusters of galaxies
• Shock finding on a moving-mesh: II. Hydrodynamic shocks in the Illustris universe
• High $\beta$ Effects on Cosmic Ray Streaming in Galaxy Clusters
• The origins of the gamma-ray flux variations of NGC 1275 based on 8 years of Fermi-LAT observations
• Constraints on axion-like particles with the Perseus Galaxy Cluster with MAGIC
• Cosmic rays and thermal instability in self-regulating cooling flows of massive galaxy clusters
• MINOT: Modeling the intracluster medium (non-)thermal content and observable prediction tools
• TeV Dark Matter Searches in the Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Sky
• Radio-continuum surveys with SKA and LOFAR: a first look at the perspectives for radio mini-halos
• On the Challenges of Cosmic-Ray Proton Shock Acceleration in the Intracluster Medium
• High-Energy Gamma Rays and Neutrinos from Nearby Radio Galaxies
• Prospects for $\gamma$-ray observations of the Perseus galaxy cluster with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Cross Correlation of the Extragalactic Gamma-ray Background with Thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect in the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Extended radio emission in the galaxy cluster MS 0735.6+7421 detected with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array
• Confinement and diffusion time-scales of CR hadrons in AGN-inflated bubbles
• XMM-Newton Observations of the Southeastern Radio Relic in Abell 3667
• Fossil shell in 3C 84 as TeV $\gamma$-ray emitter and cosmic-ray accelerator
• Gamma-Rays from Star Forming Activity Appear to Outshine Misaligned Active Galactic Nuclei
• Infrared emission from dust and the spectral features of extragalactic gamma-ray sources
• Deep Chandra Observations of the z = 1.16 Relaxed, Cool-core Galaxy Cluster SPT-CL J2215-3537
• Simultaneously unveiling the EBL and intrinsic spectral parameters of gamma-ray sources with Hamiltonian Monte Carlo
• On Integral Upper Limits Assuming Power Law Spectra and the Sensitivity in High-Energy Astronomy
• The Major Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes (MAGIC)
• Extragalactic Searches for Dark Matter Annihilation