• DOI:10.1088/2041-8205/785/2/L22
• Corpus ID: 11202067

FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE DETECTION OF SUPERNOVA REMNANT RCW 86

@article{Yuan2014FERMILA,
  title={FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE DETECTION OF SUPERNOVA REMNANT RCW 86},
  author={Qiang Yuan and Xiaoyuan Huang and Siming Liu and Bing Zhang},
  journal={The Astrophysical Journal Letters},
  year={2014},
  volume={785}
}

• Q. Yuan, Xiaoyuan Huang, +1 author Bing Zhang
• Published 19 March 2014
• Physics
• The Astrophysical Journal Letters

Using 5.4 yr Fermi Large Area Telescope data, we report the detection of GeV γ-ray emission from the shell-type supernova remnant RCW 86 (G315.4-2.3) with a significance of ∼5.1σ. The data slightly favors an extended emission of this supernova remnant. The spectral index of RCW 86 is found to be very hard, Γ ∼ 1.4, in the 0.4–300 GeV range. A one-zone leptonic model can well fit the multi-wavelength data from radio to very high energy γ-rays. The very hard GeV γ-ray spectrum and the inferred low gas density seem to disfavor a hadronic origin for the γ-rays. The γ-ray behavior of RCW 86 is very similar to several other TeV shell-type supernova remnants, e.g., RX J1713.7-3946, RX J0852.0-4622, SN 1006, and HESS J1731-347.