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arXiv · 1306.6833

Are most of the VHE gamma-ray unidentified sources relic PWNe?

Abstract

The evolution of Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe) plays a crucial role in interpreting the very high energy (VHE; > 10^11 eV) gamma-ray unidentified sources; and moreover it represents the only viable option to explain the discovery of several "dark sources" in the TeV gamma-ray (i.e. VHE gamma-ray sources without lower energies, radio or X-ray counterparts). The newest time-dependent modeling of PWNe presented in [1] and [2] has to be tested on a broader sample of young well-known PWNe and applied to the full-sample of "dark sources". The consequences of this interpretation go far beyond the interpretation of "dark sources": e.g. there could be strong implication in the origin of cosmic rays and (when considering a leptonic origin of the gamma-ray signal) they can be important for reinterpreting the detection of starburst galaxies in the TeV gamma-ray band.

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Omar Tibolla, Michael Vorster, Sarah Kaufmann, Stefan Ferreira, Karl Mannheim. 2013-06-28. Are most of the VHE gamma-ray unidentified sources relic PWNe?. https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.6833

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