GALAXY MERGERS AS A SOURCE OF COSMIC RAYS, NEUTRINOS, AND GAMMA RAYS
- Center for Particle and Gravitational Astrophysics, Department of Physics, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)
We investigate the shock acceleration of particles in massive galaxy mergers or collisions, and show that cosmic rays (CRs) can be accelerated up to the second knee energy ∼0.1-1 EeV and possibly beyond, with a hard spectral index of Γ ≈ 2. Such CRs lose their energy via hadronuclear interactions within a dynamical timescale of the merger shock, producing gamma rays and neutrinos as a by-product. If ∼10% of the shock dissipated energy goes into CR acceleration, some local merging galaxies will produce gamma-ray counterparts detectable by the Cherenkov Telescope Array. Also, based on the concordance cosmology, where a good fraction of the massive galaxies experience a major merger in a cosmological timescale, the neutrino counterparts can constitute ∼20%-60% of the isotropic background detected by IceCube.
- OSTI ID:
- 22365534
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 790, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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