97 research outputs found
Fundamental physics in space with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
Successfully launched in June 2008, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope,
formerly named GLAST, has been observing the high-energy gamma-ray sky with
unprecedented sensitivity for more than two years, opening a new window on a
wide variety of exotic astrophysical objects. This paper is a short overview of
the main science highlights, aimed at non-specialists, with emphasis on those
which are more directly connected with the study of fundamental
physics---particularly the search for signals of new physics in the diffuse
gamma-ray emission and in the cosmic radiation and the study of Gamma-Ray Burst
as laboratories for testing possible violations of the Lorentz invariance.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, submitted for the proceedings of DICE 201
Supersymmetric Extension of the Minimal Dark Matter Model
The minimal dark matter model is given a supersymmetric extension. A super
SU(2)L quintuplet is introduced with its fermionic neutral component still
being the dark matter, the dark matter particle mass is about 19.7 GeV. Mass
splitting among the quintplet due to supersymmetry particles is found to be
negligibly small compared to the electroweak corrections. Other properties of
this supersymmetry model are studied, it has the solutions to the PAMELA and
Fermi-LAT anomaly, the predictions in higher energies need further experimental
data to verify.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Chinese Physics C,
typos correcte
Spectrum and Morphology of the Two Brightest Milagro Sources in the Cygnus Region: MGRO J2019+37 and MGRO J2031+41
The Cygnus region is a very bright and complex portion of the TeV sky, host
to unidentified sources and a diffuse excess with respect to conventional
cosmic-ray propagation models. Two of the brightest TeV sources, MGRO J2019+37
and MGRO J2031+41, are analyzed using Milagro data with a new technique, and
their emission is tested under two different spectral assumptions: a power law
and a power law with an exponential cutoff. The new analysis technique is based
on an energy estimator that uses the fraction of photomultiplier tubes in the
observatory that detect the extensive air shower. The photon spectrum is
measured in the range 1 to 200 TeV using the last 3 years of Milagro data
(2005-2008), with the detector in its final configuration. MGRO J2019+37 is
detected with a significance of 12.3 standard deviations (), and is
better fit by a power law with an exponential cutoff than by a simple power
law, with a probability % (F-test). The best-fitting parameters for the
power law with exponential cutoff model are a normalization at 10 TeV of
, a spectral
index of and a cutoff energy of TeV. MGRO
J2031+41 is detected with a significance of 7.3, with no evidence of a
cutoff. The best-fitting parameters for a power law are a normalization of
and a
spectral index of . The overall flux is subject to an
30% systematic uncertainty. The systematic uncertainty on the power law
indices is 0.1. A comparison with previous results from TeV J2032+4130,
MGRO J2031+41 and MGRO J2019+37 is also presented.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure
Constraints on small-scale cosmological perturbations from gamma-ray searches for dark matter
Events like inflation or phase transitions can produce large density
perturbations on very small scales in the early Universe. Probes of small
scales are therefore useful for e.g. discriminating between inflationary
models. Until recently, the only such constraint came from non-observation of
primordial black holes (PBHs), associated with the largest perturbations.
Moderate-amplitude perturbations can collapse shortly after matter-radiation
equality to form ultracompact minihalos (UCMHs) of dark matter, in far greater
abundance than PBHs. If dark matter self-annihilates, UCMHs become excellent
targets for indirect detection. Here we discuss the gamma-ray fluxes expected
from UCMHs, the prospects of observing them with gamma-ray telescopes, and
limits upon the primordial power spectrum derived from their non-observation by
the Fermi Large Area Space Telescope.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. To appear in J Phys Conf Series (Proceedings of
TAUP 2011, Munich
Understanding hadronic gamma-ray emission from supernova remnants
We aim to test the plausibility of a theoretical framework in which the
gamma-ray emission detected from supernova remnants may be of hadronic origin,
i.e., due to the decay of neutral pions produced in nuclear collisions
involving relativistic nuclei. In particular, we investigate the effects
induced by magnetic field amplification on the expected particle spectra,
outlining a phenomenological scenario consistent with both the underlying
Physics and the larger and larger amount of observational data provided by the
present generation of gamma experiments, which seem to indicate rather steep
spectra for the accelerated particles. In addition, in order to study to study
how pre-supernova winds might affect the expected emission in this class of
sources, the time-dependent gamma-ray luminosity of a remnant with a massive
progenitor is worked out. Solid points and limitations of the proposed scenario
are finally discussed in a critical way.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures; Several comments, references and a figure added.
Some typos correcte
Stringy Space-Time Foam and High-Energy Cosmic Photons
In this review, I discuss briefly stringent tests of Lorentz-violating
quantum space-time foam models inspired from String/Brane theories, provided by
studies of high energy Photons from intense celestial sources, such as Active
Galactic Nuclei or Gamma Ray Bursts. The theoretical models predict
modifications to the radiation dispersion relations, which are quadratically
suppressed by the string mass scale, and time delays in the arrival times of
photons (assumed to be emitted more or less simultaneously from the source),
which are proportional to the photon energy, so that the more energetic photons
arrive later. Although the astrophysics at the source of these energetic
photons is still not understood, and such non simultaneous arrivals, that have
been observed recently, might well be due to non simultaneous emission as a
result of conventional physics effects, nevertheless, rather surprisingly, the
observed time delays can also fit excellently the stringy space-time foam
scenarios, provided the space-time defect foam is inhomogeneous. The key
features of the model, that allow it to evade a plethora of astrophysical
constraints on Lorentz violation, in sharp contrast to other field-theoretic
Lorentz-violating models of quantum gravity, are: (i) transparency of the foam
to electrons and in general charged matter, (ii) absence of birefringence
effects and (iii) a breakdown of the local effective lagrangian formalism.Comment: 26 pages Latex, 4 figures, uses special macros. Keynote Lecture in
the International Conference "Recent Developments in Gravity" (NEB14),
Ioannina (Greece) June 8-11 201
Constraining super-critical string/brane cosmologies with astrophysical data
We discuss fits of unconventional dark energy models to the available data
from high-redshift supernovae, distant galaxies and baryon oscillations. The
models are based either on brane cosmologies or on Liouville strings in which a
relaxation dark energy is provided by a rolling dilaton field (Q-cosmology).
Such cosmologies feature the possibility of effective four-dimensional
negative-energy dust and/or exotic scaling of dark matter. We find evidence for
a negative-energy dust at the current era, as well as for exotic-scaling
(a^{-delta}) contributions to the energy density, with delta ~= 4, which could
be due to dark matter coupling with the dilaton in Q-cosmology models. We
conclude that Q-cosmology fits the data equally well with the LambdaCDM model
for a range of parameters that are in general expected from theoretical
considerations.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Contributed to 11th International Conference on
Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP 2009) 1-5 Jul 2009,
Rome, Italy; J. Phys. Conf. Series to appea
Infrared Colors of the gamma-ray detected blazars
Blazars constitute the most enigmatic class of extragalactic gamma-ray
sources, and their observational features have been ascribed to a relativistic
jet closely aligned to the line of sight. They are generally divided in two
main classes: the BL Lac objects (BL Lacs) and the Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars
(FSRQs). In the case of BL Lacs the double bumped spectral energy distribution
(SED) is generally described by the Synchrotron Self Compton (SSC) emission,
while for the FSRQs it is interpreted as due to External Compton (EC) emission.
Recently, we showed that in the [3.4]-[4.6]-[12] micron color- color diagram
the blazar population covers a distinct region (i.e., the WISE blazar Strip,
WBS), clearly separated from the other extragalactic sources that are dominated
by thermal emission. In this paper we investigate the relation between the
infrared and gamma-ray emission for a subset of confirmed blazars from the
literature, associated with Fermi sources, for which WISE archival observations
are available. This sample is a proper subset of the sample of sources used
previously, and the availability of Fermi data is critical to constrain the
models on the emission mechanisms for the blazars. We found that the selected
blazars also lie on the WISE blazar Strip covering a narrower region of the
infrared color-color planes than the overall blazars population. We then found
an evident correlation between the IR and gamma-ray spectral indices expected
in the SSC and EC frameworks. Finally, we determined the ratio between their
gamma-ray and infrared fluxes, a surrogate of the ratio of powers between the
inverse Compton and the synchrotron SED components, and used such parameter to
test different emitting scenarios blazars.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figure, accepted for publication in ApJ, to appear in
2012 March 20 editio
Kolmogorov analysis detecting radio and Fermi gamma-ray sources in cosmic microwave background maps
The Kolmogorov stochasticity parameter is shown to act as a tool to detect
point sources in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation temperature
maps. Kolmogorov CMB map constructed for the WMAP's 7-year datasets reveals
tiny structures which in part coincide with point radio and Fermi/LAT gamma-ray
sources. In the first application of this method, we identified several sources
not present in the then available 0FGL Fermi catalog. Subsequently they were
confirmed in the more recent and more complete 1FGL catalog, thus strengthening
the evidence for the power of this methodology.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figs, 1 Table; to match the published versio
Constraining Sources of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays Using High Energy Observations with the Fermi Satellite
We analyze the conditions that enable acceleration of particles to ultra-high
energies, ~10^{20} eV (UHECRs). We show that broad band photon data recently
provided by WMAP, ISOCAM, Swift and Fermi satellites, yield constraints on the
ability of active galactic nuclei (AGN) to produce UHECRs. The high energy (MeV
- GeV) photons are produced by Compton scattering of the emitted low energy
photons and the cosmic microwave background or extra-galactic background light.
The ratio of the luminosities at high and low photon energies can therefore be
used as a probe of the physical conditions in the acceleration site. We find
that existing data excludes core regions of nearby radio-loud AGN as possible
acceleration sites of UHECR protons. However, we show that giant radio lobes
are not excluded. We apply our method to Cen A, and show that acceleration of
protons to ~10^{20} eV can only occur at distances >~ 100 kpc from the core.Comment: Extended discussion on former results; Accepted for publication in
JCA
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