Gamma rays and neutrinos from RX J1713.7-3946 in a lepto-hadronic scenario

Abstract

The gamma-ray emission of RX J1713.7-3946, despite being extensively studied in the GeV and TeV domain, remains poorly understood. This is mostly because in this range, two competing mechanisms can efficiently produce gamma rays: the inverse Compton scattering of accelerated electrons, and interactions of accelerated protons with nuclei of the ISM. In addition to the acceleration of particles from the thermal pool, the reacceleration of pre-existing CRs is often overlooked, and shall in fact also been taken into account. Especially, because of the distance to the SNR ($\sim 1$ kpc), and the low density in which the shock is currently expanding ($\sim 10^{-2}$ cm${}^{-3}$), the re-acceleration of CR electrons pre-existing in the ISM, can account for a significant fraction of the observed gamma-ray emission, and contribute to the shaping of the spectrum in the GeV-TeV range. Remarkably, this emission of leptonic origin is found to be close to the level of the gamma-ray signal in the TeV range, provided that the spectrum of pre-exisiting cosmic ray electrons is similar to the one observed in the local interstellar medium. The overall gamma-ray spectrum of RX J1713.7-3946 is naturally produced as the sum of a leptonic emission from reaccelerated CR electrons, and a subdominant hadronic emission from accelerated protons. We also argue that neutrino observations with next-generation detectors might lead to a detection even in the case of a lepto-hadronic origin of the gamma-ray emission.

6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (19)

• The cosmic-ray electron flux measured by the PAMELA experiment between 1 and 625 GeV
• Energy spectra of gamma-rays, electrons and neutrinos produced at interactions of relativistic protons with low energy radiation
• Analytical solutions for energy spectra of electrons accelerated by nonrelativistic shock-waves in shell type supernova remnants
• Observations of the young supernova remnant RX J1713.7-3946 with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Improvement of low energy atmospheric neutrino flux calculation using the JAM nuclear interaction model
• Study of Nonthermal Emission from SNR RX J1713.7-3946 with Suzaku
• Gamma ray emission from SNR RX J1713.7-3946 and the origin of galactic cosmic rays
• Hadronic gamma-rays from RX J1713.7-3946?
• Origin of Cosmic Rays
• New very local interstellar spectra for electrons, positrons, protons and light cosmic ray nuclei
• The low rate of Galactic pevatrons
• How precisely neutrino emission from supernova remnants can be constrained by gamma ray observations?
• Expected neutrino signal from supernova remnant RX J1713.7-3946 and flavor oscillations
• Prospects for Detecting Galactic Sources of Cosmic Neutrinos with IceCube: An Update
• Hadronic versus leptonic origin of the gamma-ray emission from Supernova Remnant RX J1713.7-3946
• Search for Early Gamma-ray Production in Supernovae Located in a Dense Circumstellar Medium with the Fermi LAT
• On the spectrum of stable secondary nuclei in cosmic rays
• The multi-band nonthermal emission from the supernova remnant RX J1713.7-3946
• NuSTAR observations of the supernova remnant RX J1713.7$-$3946

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The Hunt for Pevatrons: The Case of Supernova Remnants
• The population of Galactic supernova remnants in the TeV range
• Prospects for combined analyses of hadronic emission from $\gamma$-ray sources in the Milky Way with CTA and KM3NeT