Pulsars, transients and relativistic astrophysics

Abstract:

It has been proposed that core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) can take place along with the generation of a jet that fails to emerge from the stellar envelope of the progenitor star, i.e., a choked jet. Although the fraction of CCSNe that harbour such jets is unknown, it remains as an interesting possibility that can give rise to the production of high-energy neutrinos. In this work, we focus on the particular case of the recent type II supernova, SN 2023ixf, the closest of its class in the last decade. We describe the particle distributions of protons, pions, and muons in a putative jet applying a simple model to account for the relevant interactions, which are synchrotron cooling and interactions with the soft photon field in the ambient. After evaluating the produced fluence for different values of the viewing angle $i_{\rm j}$ with respect to the jet axis, and comparing with the upper bound by IceCube, we conclude that the generation of a choked jet in SN 2023ixf can not be ruled out. Specifically, for typical jet Lorentz factors of the jet $Γ=100$, the jet could have been produced with an half-opening angle $θ_{\rm op}=0.2\,{\rm rad}$ but for a viewing angle $i_{\rm j}\gtrsim θ_{\rm op}$, no significant Doppler boosting would take place along this direction. Therefore, the choked jet scenario in SN 2023ixf still remains compatible with observations provided our line of sight corresponds to an off-axis view of the jet.16 pages, 7 figures. Matches published versio

Abstract:

The diffusion coefficients around the pulsar $\gamma$-ray halos are highly suppressed compared with the value in the interstellar medium. It is suggested in the literature that the $\gamma$-ray halos can be explained by a ballistic-diffusive (BD) propagation without slow diffusion. However our calculation shows that the BD propagation can not account for the $\gamma$-ray halo profile well. Furthermore the transfer efficiency of the pulsar spin down energy to the high energy electrons and positrons is even larger than 1 in the BD scenario. Therefore slow diffusion is necessary to account for the pulsar $\gamma$-ray halos. Taking the slow diffusion into account the contribution of positron flux originated from nearby pulsars to the AMS-02 data is reexamined. We may also expect a slow diffusion disk of the Milky Way as many such slow diffusion regions exist. The positron contribution to the AMS-02 data from dark matter annihilation in the new propagation model is also reexamined. We find that the dark matter scenario satisfies all the $\gamma$-ray limits in the new propagation model.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures. Proceedings of the 38th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2023) in Nagoya, Japa