Evidence for TeV gamma-ray emission from the shell type SNR RXJ1713.7-3946
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Date
2000
Authors
Muraishi, H.
Tanimori, T.
Yanagita, S.
Yoshida, Y.
Moriya, M.
Kifune, T.
Dazeley, S.
Edwards, P.
Gunji, S.
Hara, S.
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Journal article
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Astronomy and Astrophysics: a European journal, 2000; 354(1):57-61
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H. Muraishi, T. Tanimori, S. Yanagita, T. Yoshida, M. Moriya, T. Kifune, S. A. Dazeley, P. G. Edwards, S. Gunji, S. Hara, T. Hara, A. Kawachi, H. Kubo, Y. Matsubara, Y. Mizumoto, M. Mori, Y. Muraki, T. Naito, K. Nishijima, J. R. Patterson, G. P. Rowell, T. Sako, K. Sakurazawa, R. Susukita, T. Tamura and T. Yoshikoshi
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Abstract
We report the results of TeV gamma-ray observations of the shell type SNR RXJ1713.7-3946 (G347.3-0.5). The discovery of strong non-thermal X-ray emission from the northwest part of the remnant strongly suggests the existence of electrons with energies up to 100 TeV in the remnant, making the SNR a good candidate TeV gamma-ray source. We observed RXJ1713.7-3946 from May to August 1998 with the CANGAROO 3.8m atmospheric imaging Cerenkov telescope and obtained evidence for TeV gamma-ray emission from the NW rim of the remnant with the significance of 5.6 sigma. The observed TeV gamma-ray flux from the NW rim region was estimated to be (5.3 +/- 0.9[statistical] +/- 1.6[systematic]) * 10^{-12} photons cm^{-2} s^{-1} at energies >= 1.8 +/- 0.9 TeV. The data indicate that the emitting region is much broader than the point spread function of our telescope. The extent of the emission is consistent with that of hard X-rays observed by ASCA. This TeV gamma-ray emission can be attributed to the Inverse Compton scattering of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation by shock accelerated ultra-relativistic electrons. Under this assumption, a rather low magnetic field of 11 micro gauss is deduced for the remnant from our observation.
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Copyright © 2000. © European Southern Observatory (ESO) 2000. Submitted to Cornell University’s online archive www.arXiv.org in 2000 by Hiroshi Muraishi. Post-print can be sourced from www.arxiv.org.