Modeling Hadronic Gamma-ray Emissions from Solar Flares and Prospects for Detecting Non-thermal Signatures from Protostars

We investigate gamma-ray emission in the impulsive phase of solar flares and the detectability of non-thermal signatures from protostellar flares. Energetic solar flares emit high-energy gamma rays of GeV energies, but their production mechanism and emission site are still unknown. Young stellar objects, including protostars, also exhibit luminous X-ray flares, but the triggering mechanism of the flaring activity is still unclear due to the strong obscuration. Non-thermal signatures in mm/sub-mm and gamma-ray bands are useful to probe protostellar flares owing to their strong penetration power. We develop a non-thermal emission model of the impulsive phase of solar flares, where cosmic-ray protons accelerated at the termination shock produce high-energy gamma rays via hadronuclear interaction with the evaporation plasma. This model can reproduce gamma-ray data in the impulsive phase of a solar flare. We apply our model to protostellar flares and show that Cherenkov Telescope Array will be able to detect gamma rays of TeV energies if particle acceleration in protostellar flares is efficient. Non-thermal electrons accelerated together with protons can emit strong mm and sub-mm signals via synchrotron radiation, whose power is consistent with the energetic mm/sub-mm transients observed from young stars. Future gamma-ray and mm/sub-mm observations from protostars, coordinated with a hard X-ray observation, will unravel the triggering mechanism of non-thermal particle production in protostellar flares.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Interaction of a Relativistic Magnetized Collisionless Shock with a Dense Clump

The interactions between a relativistic magnetized collisionless shock and dense clumps have been expected to play a crucial role on the magnetic field amplification and cosmic-ray acceleration. We investigate this process by two-dimensional Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations for the first time, where the clump size is much larger than the gyroradius of downstream particles. We also perform relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations for the same condition to see the kinetic effects. We find that particles escape from the shocked clump along magnetic field lines in the PIC simulations, so that the vorticity is lower than that in the MHD simulations. Moreover, in both the PIC and MHD simulations, the shocked clump quickly decelerates because of the Lorentz contraction. Owing to the escape and the deceleration, the shocked clump cannot amplify the downstream magnetic field in relativistic collisionless shocks. This large-scale PIC simulation opens a new window to understand large-scale behaviors in collisionless plasma systems

BMCs and periodontal tissue healing

Bone marrow-derived cells (BMCs) are considered to be a major source of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in adults and are known to be effective in periodontal tissue regeneration. However, whether endogenous BMCs are involved in periodontal tissue repair process is uncertain. We therefore created periodontal tissue defects in the buccal alveolar bone of mandibular first molars in bone marrow chimeric mice, and immunohistochemically examined the expression of stromal cell derived factor-1 (SDF-1) and the mobilization of BMCs. We found that SDF-1 expression was increased around the defects at as early as 1 week after injury and that BMCs were mobilized to the defects, while GFP+/CD45+ were rarely observed. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) analysis demonstrated that the number of platelet-derived growth factor receptor (pdgfr) α+/Sca-1+ (PαS) cells in the bone marrow decreased after injury. Taken together, these results suggest that BMCs are mobilized to the periodontal tissue defects. Recruitment of BMCs, including a subset of MSCs could be a new target of periodontal treatment

High-mass star formation in Orion triggered by cloud-cloud collision II, Two merging molecular clouds in NGC2024

We analyzed the NANTEN2 13CO (J=2-1 and 1-0) datasets in NGC 2024. We found that the cloud consists of two velocity components, whereas the cloud shows mostly single-peaked CO profiles. The two components are physically connected to the HII region as evidenced by their close correlation with the dark lanes and the emission nebulosity. The two components show complementary distribution with a displacement of 0.4 pc. Such complementary distribution is typical to colliding clouds discovered in regions of high-mass star formation. We hypothesize that cloud-cloud collision between the two components triggered the formation of the late O stars and early B stars localized within 0.3 pc of the cloud peak. The collision timescale is estimated to be ~ 10^5 yrs from a ratio of the displacement and the relative velocity 3-4 km s-1 corrected for probable projection. The high column density of the colliding cloud 1023 cm-2 is similar to those in the other massive star clusters in RCW 38, Westerlund 2, NGC 3603, and M42, which are likely formed under trigger by cloud-cloud collision. The present results provide an additional piece of evidence favorable to high-mass star formation by a major cloud-cloud collision in Orion.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, submitted for publication in PASJ (cloud-cloud collision special issue