Potential PeVatron supernova remnant G106.3+2.7 seen in the highest-energy gamma rays
Creators: name: Amenomori, M.
name: Bao, Y. W.
name: Bi, X. J.
name: Chen, D.
name: Chen, T. L.
name: Chen, W. Y.
name: Chen, Xu
name: Chen, Y.
name: Cirennima
name: Cui, S. W.
name: Danzengluobu
name: Ding, L. K.
name: Fang, J. H.
name: Fang, K.
name: Feng, C. F.
name: Feng, Zhaoyang
name: Feng, Z. Y.
name: Gao, Qi
name: Gou, Q. B.
name: Guo, Y. Q.
name: Guo, Y. Y.
name: He, H. H.
name: He, Z. T.
name: Hibino, K.
name: Hotta, N.
name: Hu, Haibing
name: Hu, H. B.
name: Huang, J.
name: Jia, H. Y.
name: Jiang, L.
name: Jin, H. B.
name: Kasahara, K.
name: Katayose, Y.
name: Kato, C.
name: Kato, S.
name: Kawata, K.
name: Kihara, W.
name: Ko, Y.
name: Kozai, M.
name: Labaciren
name: Le, G. M.
name: Li, A. F.
name: Li, H. J.
name: Li, W. J.
name: Lin, Y. H.
name: Liu, B.
name: Liu, C.
name: Liu, J. S.
name: Liu, M. Y.
name: Liu, W.
name: Lou, Y. -Q.
name: Lu, H.
name: Meng, X. R.
name: Munakata, K.
name: Nakada, H.
name: Nakamura, Y.
name: Nanjo, H.
name: Nishizawa, M.
name: Ohnishi, M.
name: Ohura, T.
name: Ozawa, S.
name: Qian, X. L.
name: Qu, X. B.
name: Saito, T.
name: Sakata, M.
name: Sako, T. K.
name: Shao, J.
name: Shibata, M.
name: Shiomi, A.
name: Sugimoto, H.
name: Takano, W.
name: Takita, M.
name: Tan, Y. H.
name: Tateyama, N.
name: Torii, S.
name: Tsuchiya, H.
name: Udo, S.
name: Wang, H.
name: Wu, H. R.
name: Xue, L.
name: Yamamoto, Y.
name: Yang, Z.
name: Yokoe, Y.
name: Yuan, A. F.
name: Zhai, L. M.
name: Zhang, H. M.
name: Zhang, J. L.
name: Zhang, X.
name: Zhang, X. Y.
name: Zhang, Y.
name: Zhang, Yi
name: Zhang, Ying
name: Zhao, S. P.
name: Zhaxisangzhu
name: Zhou, X. X.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Cosmic rays (protons and other atomic nuclei) are believed to gain energies of petaelectronvolts (PeV) and beyond at astrophysical particle accelerators called 'PeVatrons' inside our Galaxy. Although a characteristic feature of a PeVatron is expected to be a hard gamma-ray energy spectrum that extends beyond 100 teraelectronvolts (TeV) without a cutoff, none of the currently known sources exhibits such a spectrum due to the low maximum energy of accelerated cosmic rays or insufficient detector sensitivity around 100 TeV. Here we report the observation of gamma-ray emission from the supernova remnant G106.3+2.7 above 10 TeV. This work provides flux data points up to and above 100 TeV and indicates that the very-high-energy gamma-ray emission above 10 TeV is well correlated with a molecular cloud rather than the pulsar PSR J2229+6114. Regarding the gamma-ray emission mechanism of G106.3+2.7, this morphological feature appears to favor a hadronic origin via the π0 decay caused by accelerated relativistic protons over a leptonic one via the inverse-Compton scattering by relativistic electrons. Furthermore, we point out that an X-ray flux upper limit on the synchrotron spectrum would provide important information to firmly establish the hadronic scenario as the mechanism of particle acceleration at the source.
description: Published in Nature Astronomy