2025ApJ...978L..47C -
Astrophys. J., 978, L47 (2025/January-2)
Detection of a New GeV Source in the Outer Region of the Coma Cluster: A Signature of External Accretion Shock?
CHEN X.-B., WANG K., HUANG Y.-Y., ZHANG H.-M., XI S.-Q., LIU R.-Y. and WANG X.-Y.
Abstract (from CDS):
The supersonic flow motions associated with infall of baryonic gas toward sheets and filaments, as well as cluster mergers, produces large-scale shock waves. The shocks associated with galaxy clusters can be classified mainly into two categories: internal shocks appearing in the hot intracluster medium within the viral radius and external accretion shocks forming in the outer cold region well outside of the virial radius. Cosmic-ray (CR) electrons and/or protons accelerated by these shocks are expected to produce gamma rays through inverse-Compton scattering (ICS) or inelastic pp collisions, respectively. Recent studies have found a spatially extended GeV source within the virial radius, consistent with the internal shock origin. Here, we report the detection of a new GeV source at a distance of about 2$\mathop{.}\limits^{\unicode{x000b0}}$8 from the center of the Coma cluster through the analysis of 16.2 yr of Fermi-LAT data. The hard spectrum of the source, in agreement with the ICS origin, and its location in a large-scale filament of galaxies points to the external accretion shock origin. The gamma-ray (0.1-103 GeV) luminosity of the source, 1.4 × 1042 erg s–1, suggests that a fraction ∼10–3 of the kinetic energy flux through the shock surface is transferred to relativistic CR electrons.
Abstract Copyright:
© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
Journal keyword(s):
Galaxy clusters - Shocks - Cosmic rays
Simbad objects:
6
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