Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: Centaurus A, the cosmic ray accelerator a few Mpc away from us, is possibly one of the nearest sources of extremely high energy cosmic rays. We investigate whether the gamma ray data currently available from Centaurus A in the GeV–TeV energy band can be explained with only proton–proton interactions. We show that for a single power law proton spectrum, mechanisms of γ-ray production other than proton–proton interactions are needed inside this radio-galaxy to explain the gamma ray flux observed by EGRET, upper limits from HESS/CANGAROO-III and the correlated extremely energetic cosmic ray events observed by the Pierre Auger experiment. In future, with better γ-ray data, and simultaneous observation with γ-ray and cosmic ray detectors, it will be possible to carry out such studies on different sources in more detail.
Author: Nayantara Gupta
Institution: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1967297425