Discovery of the TeV emission from the jet interaction regions of SS 433 with HAWC

  • For the HAWC Collaboration

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory recently published the discovery of SS 433 as a TeV source, reporting the observation of multi-TeV gamma-ray emission from the jet interaction regions e1 and w1, suggesting in-situ particle acceleration. This showed the first direct evidence of acceleration in jets at energies greater than a few TeV. SS 433 was the first microquasar to be discovered and is still considered special in that the accretion is supercritical and the luminosity of the system is very high (~ 1040 erg s-2). The lobes of the supernova remnant W 50 in which the jets terminate, about 40 parsecs from the central binary, are expected to accelerate charged particles, and indeed radio and X-ray emission consistent with electron synchrotron emission in a magnetic field have been observed. SS 433 has also been a strong candidate for hadronic acceleration due to spectroscopic evidence of ionized nuclei in the inner jets. However, multiwavelength fits including the HAWC measurements favor the leptonic production of the observed gamma rays. Here, we present new follow-up measurements of the jet interaction regions of SS 433 using the most recent data from HAWC.

Original languageEnglish
JournalProceedings of Science
Volume358
StatePublished - 2019
Externally publishedYes
Event36th International Cosmic Ray Conference, ICRC 2019 - Madison, United States
Duration: 24 Jul 20191 Aug 2019

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