MAGIC Observations of the Diffuse Γ-Ray Emission in the Vicinity of the Galactic Center? MAGIC Collaboration: V
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A&A 642, A190 (2020) Astronomy https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201936896 & c MAGIC Collaboration 2020 Astrophysics MAGIC observations of the diffuse γ-ray emission in the vicinity of the Galactic center? MAGIC Collaboration: V. A. Acciari1,2, S. Ansoldi3,24, L. A. Antonelli4, A. Arbet Engels5, D. Baack6, A. Babic´7, B. Banerjee8, U. Barres de Almeida9, J. A. Barrio10, J. Becerra González1,2, W. Bednarek11, L. Bellizzi12, E. Bernardini13,17, A. Berti14, J. Besenrieder15, W. Bhattacharyya13, C. Bigongiari4, A. Biland5, O. Blanch16, G. Bonnoli12, Ž. Bošnjak7, G. Busetto17, R. Carosi18, G. Ceribella15, Y. Chai15, A. Chilingaryan19, S. Cikota7, S. M. Colak16, U. Colin15, E. Colombo1,2, J. L. Contreras10, J. Cortina20, S. Covino4, V. D’Elia4, P. Da Vela18, F. Dazzi4, A. De Angelis17, B. De Lotto3, M. Delfino16,27, J. Delgado16,27, D. Depaoli14, F. Di Pierro14, L. Di Venere14, E. Do Souto Espiñeira16, D. Dominis Prester7, A. Donini3, D. Dorner21, M. Doro17, D. Elsaesser6, V. Fallah Ramazani22, A. Fattorini6, A. Fernández-Barral17, G. Ferrara4, D. Fidalgo10, L. Foffano17, M. V. Fonseca10, L. Font23, C. Fruck15;??, S. Fukami24, R. J. García López1,2, M. Garczarczyk13, S. Gasparyan19, M. Gaug23, N. Giglietto14, F. Giordano14, N. Godinovic´7, D. Green15, D. Guberman16, D. Hadasch24, A. Hahn15, J. Herrera1,2, J. Hoang10, D. Hrupec7, M. Hütten15, T. Inada24, S. Inoue24, K. Ishio15, Y. Iwamura24;??, L. Jouvin16, D. Kerszberg16, H. Kubo24, J. Kushida24, A. Lamastra4, D. Lelas7, F. Leone4, E. Lindfors22, S. Lombardi4, F. Longo3,28, M. López10, R. López-Coto17, A. López-Oramas1,2, S. Loporchio14, B. Machado de Oliveira Fraga9, C. Maggio23, P. Majumdar8, M. Makariev25, M. Mallamaci17, G. Maneva25, M. Manganaro7, K. Mannheim21, L. Maraschi4, M. Mariotti17, M. Martínez16, S. Masuda24, D. Mazin15,24, S. Micanovi´ c´7, D. Miceli3, M. Minev25, J. M. Miranda12, R. Mirzoyan15, E. Molina26, A. Moralejo16, D. Morcuende10, V. Moreno23, E. Moretti16, P. Munar-Adrover23, V. Neustroev22, C. Nigro13, K. Nilsson22, D. Ninci16, K. Nishijima24, K. Noda24, L. Nogués16, M. Nöthe6, S. Nozaki24, S. Paiano17, J. Palacio16, M. Palatiello3, D. Paneque15, R. Paoletti12, J. M. Paredes26, P. Peñil10, M. Peresano3, M. Persic3,29, P. G. Prada Moroni18, E. Prandini17, I. Puljak7, W. Rhode6, M. Ribó26, J. Rico16, C. Righi4, A. Rugliancich18, L. Saha10, N. Sahakyan19, T. Saito24, S. Sakurai24, K. Satalecka13, K. Schmidt6, T. Schweizer15, J. Sitarek11, I. Šnidaric´7, D. Sobczynska11, A. Somero1,2, A. Stamerra4, D. Strom15, M. Strzys15,24;??, Y. Suda15, T. Suric´7, M. Takahashi24, F. Tavecchio4, P. Temnikov25, T. Terzic´7, M. Teshima15,24, N. Torres-Albà26, L. Tosti14, S. Tsujimoto24, V. Vagelli14, J. van Scherpenberg15, G. Vanzo1,2, M. Vazquez Acosta1,2, C. F. Vigorito14, V. Vitale14, I. Vovk15,24;??, M. Will15, and D. Zaric´7 (Affiliations can be found after the references) Received 11 October 2019 / Accepted 24 May 2020 ABSTRACT Aims. In the presence of a sufficient amount of target material, γ-rays can be used as a tracer in the search for sources of Galactic cosmic rays (CRs). Here we present deep observations of the Galactic center (GC) region with the MAGIC telescopes and use them to infer the underlying CR distribution and to study the alleged PeV proton accelerator at the center of our Galaxy. Methods. We used data from ≈100 h observations of the GC region conducted with the MAGIC telescopes over five years (from 2012 to 2017). Those were collected at high zenith angles (58−70 deg), leading to a larger energy threshold, but also an increased effective collection area compared to low zenith observations. Using recently developed software tools, we derived the instrument response and background models required for extracting the diffuse emission in the region. We used existing measurements of the gas distribution in the GC region to derive the underlying distribution of CRs. We present a discussion of the associated biases and limitations of such an approach. Results. We obtain a significant detection for all four model components used to fit our data (Sgr A*, “Arc”, G0.9+0.1, and an extended component for the Galactic Ridge). We observe no significant difference between the γ-ray spectra of the immediate GC surroundings, which we model as a point source (Sgr A*) and the Galactic Ridge. The latter can be described as a power-law with index 2 and an exponential cut-off at around 20 TeV with the significance of the cut-off being only 2σ. The derived cosmic-ray profile hints to a peak at the GC position and with a measured profile index of 1:2 ± 0:3 is consistent with the 1=r radial distance scaling law, which supports the hypothesis of a CR accelerator at the GC. We argue that the measurements of this profile are presently limited by our knowledge of the gas distribution in the GC vicinity. Key words. gamma rays: general – gamma rays: ISM – Galaxy: center – cosmic rays ? Tables and sky maps are only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/642/A190 ?? Corresponding authors: Christian Fruck, Ievgen Vovk, Yuki Iwamura and Marcel Strzys (e-mail: [email protected]). A190, page 1 of9 Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Open Access funding provided by Max Planck Society. A&A 642, A190 (2020) 1. Introduction The telescopes record flashes of Cherenkov light produced by extensive air showers (EAS) initiated in the upper atmosphere The Galactic center (GC) is one of the most extraordinary by γ-ray photons within a field of view of 1:5◦ (in radius). Both regions in the very high energy (VHE, >100 GeV) γ-ray sky, telescopes are operated together in a coincidence trigger stereo- containing a rich variety of sources capable of accelerating scopic mode, in which only events that simultaneously trigger charged particles and thereby producing VHE γ-ray emission both telescopes are recorded and analyzed (Aleksic´ et al. 2016). (van Eldik 2015; Aharonian et al. 2006a; H.E.S.S. Collaboration For low-zenith distance observations and for E > 220 GeV, the 2006). If those γ-rays are produced in hadronic interactions, integral sensitivity of MAGIC is (0:66 ± 0:03)% in units of the their sources may also contribute to the overall cosmic-ray “sea” Crab Nebula flux (C.U.) for 50 h of observation (Aleksic´ et al. filling the region with energized charged particles. This sea of 2016). At larger zenith angles (above 60◦), at which the GC cosmic rays (CRs) is believed to be responsible for the diffuse is observable at La Palma, the MAGIC collection area reaches Galactic plane emission detected by EGRET (Hunter et al. 1997) 1 km2 at the energies above 10 TeV (Ahnen et al. 2017a). and later studied by Fermi/LAT (Abdo et al. 2010), as well as MAGIC observations of the GC region which we used for the central γ-ray ridge detected with all major Imaging Atmo- this study were carried out between April 2012 and May 2017 spheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs, H.E.S.S. Collaboration (typically from March to July). The observation time after qual- 2006; Archer et al. 2016; Ahnen et al. 2017a). The detected γ- ity selection cuts is ≈100 h. The data were taken in the so-called rays originate primarily from deep inelastic nuclear interactions “Wobble” mode (Fomin et al. 1994), centered on Sgr A* with a of the high-energetic particles with the surrounding gas, which pointing offset of 0:4◦. can also be traced via its emission in the radio band (CS emis- The acquired data were processed with the standard MAGIC sion, Tsuboi et al. 1999; CO emission, Oka et al. 1998). Thus, Analysis and Reconstruction Software (MARS, Zanin et al. deep γ-ray observations in the TeV energy range can be used to 2013). The steps involved include the selection of good data infer the underlying CR density, provided that the gas distribu- quality periods, low-level processing of camera images, calcula- tion is reliably measured. tion of image parameters, and the reconstruction of the energy This idea has been applied in earlier studies using observa- and incoming direction of the primary γ-rays. The last step ≈± ◦ tions of the central 1 region (in latitude) of the Galaxy (cor- is performed using the machine learning technique Random ≈ responding to 300 pc at a distance of 8.5 kpc) with the High Forests (Albert et al. 2008), where Monte Carlo events and real Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), suggesting an inhomo- background data are used for training. This technique is also geneous distribution of CRs around the GC (Aharonian et al. used for background suppression through event classification. 2006b; H.E.S.S. Collaboration 2016, 2018). Furthermore, those At the quality selection step, we removed events correspond- data indicate that the central super-massive black hole of our 15 ing to known temporary hardware issues or recorded during bad Galaxy may itself accelerate particles to PeV (10 eV) energies. weather periods. As the full data sample contains some nights Observing the GC region with the MAGIC telescopes is only with weak moonlight, we also excluded time periods with sky possible at large zenith distances (>58◦), implying an increased brightness &2:5 times the typical dark night sky brightness. Data optical thickness of the atmosphere and larger distance to the recorded with higher sky brightness lead to biases when ana- shower maximum, which leads to a stronger dilution of the lyzed with the same pipeline that is used for data that has been Cherenkov light.