The Square Kilometre Array (SKA)

Abstract:

Abstract The origin of cosmic rays from outside the Solar system are unknown, as they are deflected by the interstellar magnetic field. Supernova remnants are the main candidate for cosmic rays up to PeV energies but due to lack of evidence, they cannot be concluded as the sources of the most energetic Galactic CRs. We investigate discrete ejecta produced in state transitions of black hole X-ray binary systems as a potential source of cosmic rays, motivated by recent >100 TeV γ-ray detections by LHAASO. Starting from MAXI J1820+070, we examine the multi-wavelength observations and find that efficient particle acceleration may take place (i.e. into a robust power-law), up to ∼2 × 1016μ−1/2 eV, where μ is the ratio of particle energy to magnetic energy. From these calculations, we estimate the global contribution of ejecta to the entire Galactic spectrum to be $\sim 1~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$, with the cosmic ray contribution rising to $\sim 5~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ at PeV energies, assuming roughly equal energy in non-thermal protons, non-thermal electrons and magnetic fields. In addition, we calculate associated γ-ray and neutrino spectra of the MAXI J1820+070 ejecta to investigate new detection methods with CTAO, which provide strong constraints on initial ejecta size of order 107 Schwarzschild radii (10−5 pc) assuming a period of adiabatic expansion.

Abstract:

Black holes (BHs) in microquasars can launch powerful relativistic jets that have the capacity to travel up to several parsecs from the compact object and interact with the interstellar medium. Recently, the detection of large-scale very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission around the black hole transient V4641 Sgr and other BH-jet systems suggested that jets from microquasars may play an important role in the production of galactic cosmic rays. V4641 Sgr is known for its superluminal radio jet discovered in 1999, but no radio counterpart of a large-scale jet has been observed. The goal of this work is to search for a radio counterpart of the extended VHE source. We observed V4641 Sgr with the MeerKAT radio telescope at the and bands and produced deep maps of the field using high dynamic range techniques. L UHF We report the discovery of a large-scale (∼ 35 ), bow-tie-shaped, diffuse, radio structure around V4641 Sgr, with similar angular size to the extended X-ray emission discovered by XRISM. However, it is not spatially coincident with the extended VHE emission. After discussing the association of the structure with V4641 Sgr, we investigate the nature of the emission mechanism. We suggest that the bow-tie structure arose from the long-term action of large-scale jets or disk winds from V4641 Sgr. If the emission mechanism is of synchrotron origin, the radio/X-ray extended structure implies acceleration of electrons up to more than 100 as far as tens of parsecs from the black hole. pc TeV