Young star clusters as gamma ray emitters and their detection with Cherenkov Telescopes
Abstract
Young massive star clusters as sites of strong stellar winds and supernova explosions may accelerate charged particles at high energies and produce gamma-rays. These sources may also contribute to the production of cosmic rays in our galaxy. At TeV energies several candidates have already been detected: Cygnus OB2, Westerlund 1 \& 2, W43, Pismis 22 and W49A. Our study addresses the issue of very young star clusters where no supernova has occurred yet. During the lifetime of a massive star (M$ > 20 M_{\odot}$), supersonic stellar winds do indeed release as much energy as a supernova explosion. As supernova remnants are already known as gamma-ray emitters our purpose is to avoid any ambiguity on the origin of a possible gamma ray emission and to fully assume a stellar wind contribution. In this work we first present a catalogue of potential gamma-ray emitting clusters and discuss the criteria used to built the catalogue. We hence model the expected energetic particle spectrum including escapes and losses. We deduce gamma-ray luminosities produced by Inverse Compton and pion decay emission of each cluster and their associated HII regions. We finally compare these gamma-ray luminosities with HESS-II and CTA Cherenkov telescopes sensitivities.
Origin | Files produced by the author(s) |
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