Very-high energy observations of the galactic center region by VERITAS in 2010-2012
- Department of Physics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130 (United States)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Amado, AZ 85645 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 (United States)
- School of Physics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4 (Ireland)
- Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics and Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
- Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011 (United States)
- Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, D-14476 Potsdam-Golm (Germany)
- Astronomy Department, Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, Chicago, IL 60605 (United States)
- School of Physics, National University of Ireland Galway, University Road, Galway (Ireland)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 (United States)
The Galactic center is an interesting region for high-energy (0.1-100 GeV) and very-high-energy (E > 100 GeV) γ-ray observations. Potential sources of GeV/TeV γ-ray emission have been suggested, e.g., the accretion of matter onto the supermassive black hole, cosmic rays from a nearby supernova remnant (e.g., Sgr A East), particle acceleration in a plerion, or the annihilation of dark matter particles. The Galactic center has been detected by EGRET and by Fermi/LAT in the MeV/GeV energy band. At TeV energies, the Galactic center was detected with moderate significance by the CANGAROO and Whipple 10 m telescopes and with high significance by H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS. We present the results from three years of VERITAS observations conducted at large zenith angles resulting in a detection of the Galactic center on the level of 18 standard deviations at energies above ∼2.5 TeV. The energy spectrum is derived and is found to be compatible with hadronic, leptonic, and hybrid emission models discussed in the literature. Future, more detailed measurements of the high-energy cutoff and better constraints on the high-energy flux variability will help to refine and/or disentangle the individual models.
- OSTI ID:
- 22365466
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 790, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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