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Fermi-LAT

Publications and source records attributed to Fermi-LAT.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Multi-messenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A

Individual astrophysical sources previously detected in neutrinos are limited to the Sun and the supernova 1987A, whereas the origins of the diffuse flux of high-energy cosmic neutrinos remain unidentified. On 22 September 2017 we detected a high-energy neutrino, IceCube-170922A, with an energy of approximately 290 TeV. Its arrival direction was consistent with the location of a known gamma-ray blazar TXS 0506+056, observed to be in a flaring state. An extensive multi-wavelength campaign followed, ranging from radio frequencies to gamma-rays. These observations characterize the variability and energetics of the blazar and include the first detection of TXS 0506+056 in very-high-energy gamma-rays. This observation of a neutrino in spatial coincidence with a gamma-ray emitting blazar during an active phase suggests that blazars may be a source of high-energy neutrinos.

astro-ph.HE

Detection of a spectral break in the extra hard component of GRB 090926A

We report on the observation of the bright, long gamma-ray burst, GRB 090926A, by the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and Large Area Telescope (LAT) instruments on board the \Fermi\ Gamma-ray Space Telescope. GRB 090926A shares several features with other bright LAT bursts. In particular, it clearly shows a short spike in the light curve that is present in all detectors that see the burst, and this in turn suggests that there is a common region of emission across the entire \Fermi\ energy range. In addition, while a separate high-energy power-law component has already been observed in other GRBs, here we report for the first time the detection with good significance of a high-energy spectral break (or cutoff) in this power-law component around 1.4 GeV in the time-integrated spectrum. If the spectral break is caused by opacity to electron-positron pair production within the source, then this observation allows us to compute the bulk Lorentz factor for the outflow, rather than a lower limit.

astro-ph.HE

Fermi observations of high-energy gamma-ray emission from GRB 090217A

The Fermi observatory is advancing our knowledge of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) through pioneering observations at high energies, covering more than 7 decades in energy with the two on-board detectors, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM). Here we report on the observation of the long GRB 090217A which triggered the GBM and has been detected by the LAT with a significance greater than 9 sigma. We present the GBM and LAT observations and on-ground analyses, including the time-resolved spectra and the study of the temporal profile from 8 keV up to 1 GeV. All spectra are well reproduced by a Band model. We compare these observations to the first two LAT-detected, long bursts GRB 080825C and GRB 080916C. These bursts were found to have time-dependent spectra and exhibited a delayed onset of the high-energy emission, which are not observed in the case of GRB 090217A. We discuss some theoretical implications for the high-energy emission of GRBs.

astro-ph.HE