A study of super-luminous stars with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
| Autor: | Andrew W. Strong, Elena Orlando, Mattia Di Mauro, Raniere de Menezes |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Physics
Betelgeuse High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) Solar System Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Stellar atmosphere Astronomy FOS: Physical sciences Astronomy and Astrophysics Cosmic ray Electron Astrophysics Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics law.invention Telescope Stars law Space and Planetary Science Astrophysics::Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Halo Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope |
| DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2107.02051 |
| Popis: | The $\gamma$-ray emission from stars is induced by the interaction of cosmic rays with stellar atmospheres and photon fields. This emission is expected to come in two components: a stellar disk emission, where $\gamma$-rays are mainly produced in atmospheric showers generated by hadronic cosmic rays, and an extended halo emission, where the high density of soft photons in the surroundings of stars create a suitable environment for $\gamma$-ray production via inverse Compton (IC) scattering by cosmic-ray electrons. Besides the Sun, no other disk or halo from single stars has ever been detected in $\gamma$-rays. However, by assuming a cosmic-ray spectrum similar to that observed on Earth, the predicted $\gamma$-ray emission of super-luminous stars, like e.g. Betelgeuse and Rigel, could be high enough to be detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) after its first decade of operations. In this work, we use 12 years of Fermi-LAT observations along with IC models to study 9 super-luminous nearby stars, both individually and via stacking analysis. Our results show no significant $\gamma$-ray emission, but allow us to restrict the stellar $\gamma$-ray fluxes to be on average $ Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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