Diffuse Ultra-High-Energy Gamma-Ray Emission From TeV Halos

Abstract

The LHAASO Collaboration has recently reported a measurement of the diffuse gamma-ray emission from the Galactic Plane at energies between 10 TeV and 1 PeV. While this emission is brighter than that expected from cosmic-ray interactions in the interstellar medium alone, we show that the intensity, spectrum, and morphology of this excess are in good agreement with that predicted from the "TeV halos" which surround the Milky Way's pulsar population. These results support the conclusion that TeV halos dominate the ultra-high-energy sky, and that these objects convert $\sim 5\%$ of their total spindown power into very-high and ultra-high-energy photons.

7 pages, 3 figures, 1 appendix, v2: version published in PRD

References in corpus (19)

• Extended gamma-ray sources around pulsars constrain the origin of the positron flux at Earth
• Observation of high-energy neutrinos from the Galactic plane
• The First LHAASO Catalog of Gamma-Ray Sources
• Multiple Galactic Sources with Emission Above 56 TeV Detected by HAWC
• First Detection of sub-PeV Diffuse Gamma Rays from the Galactic Disk: Evidence for Ubiquitous Galactic Cosmic Rays beyond PeV Energies
• 3HWC: The Third HAWC Catalog of Very-High-Energy Gamma-ray Sources
• Measurement of ultra-high-energy diffuse gamma-ray emission of the Galactic plane from 10 TeV to 1 PeV with LHAASO-KM2A
• High-Energy Gamma Rays from the Milky Way: Three-Dimensional Spatial Models for the Cosmic-Ray and Radiation Field Densities in the Interstellar Medium
• Galactocentric variation of the gas-to-dust ratio and its relation with metallicity
• Contribution of pulsars to cosmic-ray positrons in light of recent observation of inverse-Compton halos
• Cosmic-Ray Propagation in Light of Recent Observation of Geminga
• Evidences of low-diffusion bubbles around Galactic pulsars
• Unresolved sources naturally contribute to PeV $\gamma$-ray diffuse emission observed by Tibet AS$\gamma$
• Evidence that Ultra-High-Energy Gamma Rays are a Universal Feature Near Powerful Pulsars
• Evidence of TeV Halos Around Millisecond Pulsars
• Galactic diffuse gamma-ray emission from GeV to PeV energies in light of up-to-date cosmic ray measurements
• Population synthesis of pulsar wind nebulae and pulsar halos in the Milky Way -- Predicted contributions to the very-high-energy sky
• Constraints on the $e^{\pm }$ Pair Injection of Pulsar Halos: Implications from the Galactic Diffuse Multi-TeV Gamma-ray Emission
• Constraining the Milky Way's Pulsar Population with the Cosmic-Ray Positron Fraction

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Measurement of Very-high-energy Diffuse Gamma-ray Emissions from the Galactic Plane with LHAASO-WCDA
• On the Contribution of Unresolved Pulsars to the Ultra-high-energy Galactic Diffuse Gamma-Ray Emission
• Energy dependence of the knee in the cosmic ray spectrum across the Milky Way
• Imprints of PeV cosmic-ray sources on the diffuse gamma-ray emission
• A New Perspective on the Diffuse Gamma-Ray Emission Excess
• Absence of TeV halos around millisecond pulsars
• Extended TeV Halos May Commonly Exist around Middle-Aged Pulsars
• PHECT: A lightweight computation tool for pulsar halo emission
• Search for TeV emission from spider millisecond pulsars with HAWC
• Interpreting the LHAASO Galactic diffuse emission data