Gamma-ray astronomy

Abstract:

Non-blazar radio-galaxies emitting in the very-high-energy (VHE; >100 GeV) regime offer a unique perspective for probing particle acceleration and emission processes in black hole (BH) accretion-jet systems. The misaligned nature of these sources indicates the presence of an emission component that could be of hadronic origin and located in the core region. Here we consider turbulent magnetic reconnection in the BH accretion flow of radio-galaxies as a potential mechanism for cosmic-ray (CR) acceleration and VHE emission. To investigate if this scenario is able to account for the observed VHE data, we combine three numerical techniques to self-consistently model the accretion flow environment and the propagation of CRs plus electromagnetic cascades within the accretion flow zone. Here we apply our approach to the radio-galaxy Centaurus A and find that injection of CRs consistent with magnetic reconnection power partially reproduce the VHE data, provided that the accretion flow makes no substantial contribution to the radio-GeV components. The associated neutrino emission peaks at ∼ 1016 eV and is two orders of magnitude below the minimum IceCube flux.

Abstract:

The interactions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with background photons in extragalactic space generate high-energy neutrinos and photons. Simulating UHECR propagation requires assumptions about physical quantities such as the spectrum of the extragalactic background light (EBL) and photodisintegration cross sections. These assumptions, as well as the approximations used in the codes, may influence the computed predictions both of cosmic-ray spectra and composition, and of cosmogenic neutrino and photon fluxes. Following up on our previous work where we studied the resulting uncertainties on cosmic-ray simulations, here we quantify those on neutrinos and photons, using the Monte Carlo codes CRPropa and SimProp in various source scenarios. We discuss the results in the light of the constraining power of the neutrino and photon spectra on the origin of the UHECRs. We show that cosmogenic neutrino fluxes are more sensitive to the parametrization of the EBL than UHECR spectra, whereas the overall cosmogenic gamma-ray production rates are relatively independent on details of the propagation. We also find large differences between neutrino fluxes predicted by the latest released versions of CRPropa and SimProp, and discuss their causes and possible improvements in future versions of the codes.