1203.3215 (HESS Collaboration)

Discovery of VHE emission towards the Carina arm region with the H.E.S.S. telescope array: HESS J1018-589    [PDF]

HESS Collaboration

The observational coverage with HESS of the Carina region in VHE gamma-rays benefits from deep exposure (40 h) of the neighboring open cluster Westerlund 2. The observations have revealed a new extended region of VHE gamma-ray emission. The new VHE source HESS J1018-589 shows a bright, point-like emission region positionally coincident with SNR G284.3-1.8 and 1FGL J1018.6 - 5856 and a diffuse extension towards the direction of PSR J1016-5857. A soft Gamma=2.7\pm0.5 photon index, with a differential flux at 1TeV of N0=(4.2\pm1.1)\dot 10-13 TeV-1 cm-2 s-1 is found for the point-like source, whereas the total emission region including the diffuse emission region is well fit by a power-law function with spectral index Gamma=2.9\pm0.4 and differential flux at 1TeV of N0=(6.8\pm1.6)\dot10-13 TeV-1 cm-2 s-1. This H.E.S.S. detection motivated follow-up X-ray observations with the XMM-Newton satellite to investigate the origin of the VHE emission. The analysis of the XMM-Newton data resulted in the discovery of a bright, non-thermal point-like source (XMMU J101855.4-58564) with a photon index of Gamma=1.65\pm0.08 in the center of SNRG284.3-1.8, and a thermal, extended emission region coincident with its bright northern filament. The characteristics of this thermal emission are used to estimate the plasma density in the region as n\approx0.5 cm-3(2.9kpc/d)2. The position of XMMUJ101855.4-58564 is compatible with the position reported by the Fermi-LAT collaboration for the binary system 1FGL J1018.6-5856 and the variable Swift XRT source identified with it. The new X-ray data are used alongside archival multi-wavelength data to investigate the relationship between the VHE gamma-ray emission from HESSJ1018-589 and the various potential counterparts in the Carina arm region.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.3215