Topic > Very High Energy Galactic Center - 878

Every time a new "messenger" (different wavelengths of photons or a different particle) was added to the list of observables accessible to astrophysicists, the Universe appeared in a new light: it revealed surprising features and triggered new questions, ultimately changing our understanding of fundamental physics and cosmology. Examples include the new elementary particles discovered in cosmic rays in the 1930s and 1940s, flavor oscillations from solar and atmospheric neutrinos, or the revolutions brought about by radio astronomy or X-ray astronomy. In the last decade a new branch of astronomy: the astronomy of high and very high energy gamma rays. In particular, 2OO4 was a very important year for gamma-ray astronomy. First, it was the year that marked the 30th anniversary of the discovery of the compact radio source Sgr A* (Balick and Brown 1974) which is now strongly believed to be the revelation of a supermassive black hole with a mass of (3 times 10^ {6} M odot ) which resides in the rotational center of the Galaxy, according to measurements of stellar motions near the Galactic Center (GC). Furthermore, it was the year in which the first detection of gamma rays was made from a compact region of size (sim 10') around Sgr A* with the INTEGRAL observatory ( extit{International Gamma-Ray Astrophysical Laboratory } ) in energy range from 20 to 100 keV (Belanger et al 2004) and with the Cerenkov telescope HESS (High Energy Stereoscopic System) between 165 and 10 TeV (Aharonian et al 2004). The detection of a source of high-energy radiation that appears to be point-like and coincident with the Galactic Core appears to be the result of 30 years of observations. The GC is now also observed by the Fermi Space Observatory. When J.Co...... at the center of the paper ...... i.e. within (sim 100 ) Schwarzchild rays of the black hole). This fact must be explained by any model for TeV gamma rays and seems to support the scenario in which gamma rays are associated with electrons accelerated by the pulsar wind nebula. However, protons can be accelerated near the black hole, but be converted into gamma rays only after traveling a significant distance from the acceleration region (e.g. Atoyan n Dermer 2004; Aharonian n Neronov 2005; Ballantyne et al., 2007a). In the scenario presented by Ballantyne et al. (2007a), it is assumed that the acceleration of protons occurs only at distances (sim 20-30 ) Schwarzchild radii from the black hole (eg Liu et al. 2006). Would the particles then diffuse away from Sgr A* through the magnetized turbulent ISM? , until the possible collision with the dense molecular gas in the circumnuclear disk.