A Semianalytic Afterglow with Thermal Electrons and Synchrotron Self-Compton Emission

We extend previous work on gamma-ray burst afterglows involving hot thermal electrons at the base of a shock-accelerated tail. Using a physically motivated electron distribution based on first-principles simulations, we compute the broadband emission from radio to TeV gamma rays. For the first time, we present the effects of a thermal distribution of electrons on synchrotron self-Compton emission. The presence of thermal electrons causes temporal and spectral structure across the entire observable afterglow, which is substantively different from models that assume a pure power-law distribution for the electrons. We show that early-time TeV emission is enhanced by more than an order of magnitude for our fiducial parameters, with a time-varying spectral index that does not occur for a pure power law of electrons. We further show that the X-ray closure relations take a very different, also time-dependent, form when thermal electrons are present; the shape traced out by the X-ray afterglows is a qualitative match to observations of the traditional decay phase.

Constraining the coherence scale of the interstellar magnetic field using TeV gamma-ray observations of supernova remnants

ABSTRACT Galactic cosmic rays (CRs) are believed to be accelerated at supernova remnant (SNR) shocks. In the hadronic scenario, the TeV gamma-ray emission from SNRs originates from decaying pions that are produced in collisions of the interstellar gas and CRs. Using CR-magnetohydrodynamic simulations, we show that magnetic obliquity-dependent shock acceleration is able to reproduce the observed TeV gamma-ray morphology of SNRs such as Vela Jr and SN1006 solely by varying the magnetic morphology. This implies that gamma-ray bright regions result from quasi-parallel shocks (i.e. when the shock propagates at a narrow angle to the upstream magnetic field), which are known to efficiently accelerate CR protons, and that gamma-ray dark regions point to quasi-perpendicular shock configurations. Comparison of the simulated gamma-ray morphology to observations allows us to constrain the magnetic coherence scale λB around Vela Jr and SN1006 to $\lambda _B \simeq 13_{-4.3}^{+13}$ pc and $\lambda _B \gt 200_{-40}^{+50}$ pc, respectively, where the ambient magnetic field of SN1006 is consistent with being largely homogeneous. We find consistent pure hadronic and mixed hadronic-leptonic models that both reproduce the multifrequency spectra from the radio to TeV gamma-rays and match the observed gamma-ray morphology. Finally, to capture the propagation of an SNR shock in a clumpy interstellar medium, we study the interaction of a shock with a dense cloud with numerical simulations and analytics. We construct an analytical gamma-ray model for a core collapse SNR propagating through a structured interstellar medium, and show that the gamma-ray luminosity is only biased by 30 per cent for realistic parameters.

Secondary-electron radiation accompanying hadronic GeV–TeV gamma-rays from supernova remnants

ABSTRACT The synchrotron radiation from secondary electrons and positrons (SEPs) generated by hadronic interactions in the shock of supernova remnant (SNR) could be a distinct evidence of cosmic ray (CR) production in SNR shocks. Here, we provide a method where the observed gamma-ray flux from SNRs, created by pion decays, is directly used to derive the SEP distribution and hence the synchrotron spectrum. We apply the method to three gamma-ray bright SNRs. In the young SNR RX J1713.7−3946, if the observed GeV−TeV gamma-rays are of hadronic origin and the magnetic field in the SNR shock is B ≳ 0.5 mG, the SEPs may produce a spectral bump at 10−5–10−2 eV, exceeding the predicted synchrotron component of the leptonic model, and a soft spectral tail at ≳100 keV, distinct from the hard spectral slope in the leptonic model. In the middle-aged SNRs IC443 and W44, if the observed gamma-rays are of hadronic origin, the SEP synchrotron radiation with B ∼ 400–500 μG can well account for the observed radio flux and spectral slopes, supporting the hadronic origin of gamma-rays. Future microwave to far-infrared and hard X-ray (>100keV) observations are encouraged to constraining the SEP radiation and the gamma-ray origin in SNRs.