12 research outputs found
On the mass composition of primary cosmic rays in the energy region 10^15-10^16 eV
The method of a determination of the Primary Cosmic Ray mass composition is
presented. Data processing is based on the theoretical model representing the
integral muon multiplicity spectrum as the superposition of the spectra
corresponding to different kinds of primary nuclei. The method consists of two
stages. At the first stage, the permissible intervals of primary nuclei
fractions f_i are determined on the base of the EAS spectrum vs the total
number of muons (E_mu > 235 GeV). At the second stage, the permissible
intervals of f_i are narrowed by fitting procedure. We use the experimental
data on high multiplicity muon events (n_mu > 114) collected at the Baksan
underground scintillation telescope. Within the framework of three components
(protons, helium and heavy nuclei), the mass composition in the region
10^15-10^16 eV has been defined: f_p = 0.235 +- 0.02, f_He = 0.290 +- 0.02$,
f_H = 0.475 +- 0.03.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure
Recent Results from the VERITAS Collaboration
A decade after the discovery of TeV gamma-rays from the blazar Mrk 421 (Punch et al. 1992), the list of TeV blazars has increased to five BL Lac objects: Mrk 421 (Punch et al. 1992; Petry et al. 1996; Piron et al. 2001), Mrk 501 (Quinn et al. 1996; Aharonian et al. 1999; Djannati-Atai et al. 1999), 1ES2344+514 (Catanese et al. 1998), H1426+428 (Horan et al. 2000, 2002; Aharonian et al. 2002; Djannati-Atai et al. 2002) and 1ES1959+650 (Nishiyama et al. 1999; Konopelko et al. 2002; Holder et al. 2002). In this paper we report results from recent observations of Mrk 421, H1426+428 and 1ES1959+650 using the Whipple Observatory 10 m telescope
Diffuse Gamma Rays: Galactic and Extragalactic Diffuse Emission
"Diffuse" gamma rays consist of several components: truly diffuse emission
from the interstellar medium, the extragalactic background, whose origin is not
firmly established yet, and the contribution from unresolved and faint Galactic
point sources. One approach to unravel these components is to study the diffuse
emission from the interstellar medium, which traces the interactions of high
energy particles with interstellar gas and radiation fields. Because of its
origin such emission is potentially able to reveal much about the sources and
propagation of cosmic rays. The extragalactic background, if reliably
determined, can be used in cosmological and blazar studies. Studying the
derived "average" spectrum of faint Galactic sources may be able to give a clue
to the nature of the emitting objects.Comment: 32 pages, 28 figures, kapproc.cls. Chapter to the book "Cosmic
Gamma-Ray Sources," to be published by Kluwer ASSL Series, Edited by K. S.
Cheng and G. E. Romero. More details can be found at
http://www.gamma.mpe-garching.mpg.de/~aws/aws.htm
Highlight Talk: Recent Results from VERITAS
VERITAS is a state-of-the-art ground-based gamma-ray observatory that operates in the very high-energy (VHE) region of 100 GeV to 50 TeV. The observatory consists of an array of four 12m-diameter imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes located in southern Arizona, USA. The four-telescope array has been fully operational since September 2007, and over the last two years, VERITAS has been operating with high efficiency and with excellent performance. This talk summarizes the recent results from VERITAS, including the discovery of eight new VHE gamma-ray sources
Science capabilities of the VERITAS array of 10 m imaging atmospheric Cherenkov gamma-ray detectors
The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) is an array of seven 10m aperture telescopes used for gamma-ray astronomy in the 50 GeV to 50 TeV (1 TeV= 1012 electron Volt) energy range. The gamma rays are detected by measuring the optical Cherenkov light emitted by the cascade of electromagnetic particles that is generated by interactions of the high energy gamma-ray with the Earth's Atmosphere. This paper describes the science goals of the VERITAS array, a description of the array, and expected performance of the instrument
ERRATUM: MULTI-WAVELENGTH OBSERVATIONS OF THE FLARING GAMMA-RAY BLAZAR 3C 66A IN 2008 OCTOBER (vol 726, pg 43, 2011)
This is an Erratum for the article 2011 ApJ 726 4
Insights into the high-energy gamma-ray emission of markarian 501 from extensive multifrequency observations in the fermi era
We report on the gamma-ray activity of the blazar Mrk 501 during the first 480 days of Fermi operation. We find that the average Large Area Telescope (LAT) gamma-ray spectrum of Mrk 501 can be well described by a single power-law function with a photon index of 1.78 +/- 0.03. While we observe relatively mild flux variations with the Fermi-LAT (within less than a factor of two), we detect remarkable spectral variability where the hardest observed spectral index within the LAT energy range is 1.52 +/- 0.14, and the softest one is 2.51 +/- 0.20. These unexpected spectral changes do not correlate with the measured flux variations above 0.3 GeV. In this paper, we also present the first results from the 4.5 month long multifrequency campaign (2009 March 15-August 1) on Mrk 501, which included the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), Swift, RXTE, MAGIC, and VERITAS, the F-GAMMA, GASP-WEBT, and other collaborations and instruments which provided excellent temporal and energy coverage of the source throughout the entire campaign. The extensive radio to TeV data set from this campaign provides us with the most detailed spectral energy distribution yet collected for this source during its relatively low activity. The average spectral energy distribution of Mrk 501 is well described by the standard one-zone synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) model. In the framework of this model, we find that the dominant emission region is characterized by a size less than or similar to 0.1 pc (comparable within a factor of few to the size of the partially resolved VLBA core at 15-43 GHz), and that the total jet power (similar or equal to 10(44) erg s(-1)) constitutes only a small fraction (similar to 10(-3)) of the Eddington luminosity. The energy distribution of the freshly accelerated radiating electrons required to fit the time-averaged data has a broken power-law form in the energy range 0.3 GeV-10 TeV, with spectral indices 2.2 and 2.7 below and above the break energy of 20 GeV. We argue that such a form is consistent with a scenario in which the bulk of the energy dissipation within the dominant emission zone of Mrk 501 is due to relativistic, proton-mediated shocks. We find that the ultrarelativistic electrons and mildly relativistic protons within the blazar zone, if comparable in number, are in approximate energy equipartition, with their energy dominating the jet magnetic field energy by about two orders of magnitude