A Possible Link Between the Galactic Center HESS Source and Sgr A*

D. R. Ballantyne(1), Fulvio Melia(1,2,3), Siming Liu(4), and Roland M. Crocker(5)


(1) Department of Physics, The University of Arizona, Tucson
(2) Steward Observatory, The University of Arizona, Tucson
(3) Sir Thomas Lyle Fellow and Miegunyah Fellow.
(4) Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos
(5) School of Chemistry and Physics, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

Paper: ApJ Letters, in press

EPrint Server: astro-ph/0701709


Abstract:

Recently, HESS and other air Cerenkov telescopes have detected a source of TeV gamma -rays coincident with the Galactic center. It is not yet clear whether the gamma -rays are produced via leptonic or hadronic processes, so it is important to consider possible acceleration sites for the charged particles which produce the gamma -rays. One exciting possibility for the origin of these particles is the central black hole, Sgr A*, where the turbulent magnetic fields close to the event horizon can accelerate protons to TeV energies. Using a realistic model of the density distribution in a 6 pc*6 pc*6 pc cube at the Galactic center, we here calculate the trajectories followed by these TeV protons as they gyrate through the turbulent medium surrounding Sgr A*. Diffusing out from the black hole, the protons produce TeV gamma -rays via \pi0 decay following a collision with a proton in the surrounding medium. After following over 222,000 such trajectories, we find that the circumnuclear ring around Sgr A* can reproduce the observed 0.1-100 TeV HESS spectrum and flux if the protons are injected into this medium with an effective power-law index 0.75, significantly harder than the observed photon index of 2.25. The total energy in the steady-state 1-40 TeV proton population surrounding Sgr A* is inferred to be 2* 1047 ergs. Only 31% of the emitted 1-100 TeV protons encounter the circumnuclear torus, leaving a large flux of protons that diffuse outward to contribute to the Galactic ridge emission observed by HESS on scales of > 1^o.


Preprints available from the authors at drb@physics.arizona.edu , or the raw TeX (no figures) if you click here.

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