Evidence for gamma-ray jets in the Milky Way
View/ Open
Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x/753/1/61Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Su, Meng, and Douglas P. Finkbeiner. 2012. “Evidence for gamma-ray jets in the Milky Way.” The Astrophysical Journal 753 (1) (June 14): 61. doi:10.1088/0004-637x/753/1/61.Abstract
Although accretion onto supermassive black holes in other galaxies is seen to produce powerful jets in X-ray and radio, no convincing detection has ever been made of a kpc-scale jet in the Milky Way. The recently discovered pair of 10 kpc tall gamma-ray bubbles in our Galaxy may be signs of earlier jet activity from the central black hole. In this paper, we identify a gamma-ray cocoon feature in the southern bubble, a jet-like feature along the cocoon's axis of symmetry, and another directly opposite the Galactic center in the north. Both the cocoon and jet-like feature have a hard spectrum with spectral index ~ – 2 from 1 to 100 GeV, with a cocoon total luminosity of (5.5 ± 0.45) × 1035 and luminosity of the jet-like feature of (1.8 ± 0.35) × 1035 erg s–1 at 1-100 GeV. If confirmed, these jets are the first resolved gamma-ray jets ever seen.Terms of Use
This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAACitable link to this page
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:34519625
Collections
- FAS Scholarly Articles [18292]
Contact administrator regarding this item (to report mistakes or request changes)