Results from observations of AGNs with the H.E.S.S. telescope system and Future plans

The H.E.S.S. (High Energy Stereoscopic System) phase I is comprised of four Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, for observation of galactic and cosmic sources of very high energy gamma rays. Its installation in the Khomas highlands, Namibia has been completed in December, 2003. The first of these telescopes was installed in June 2003, and data-taking has proceeded since that time. The HESS telescope system provides a significant improvement in sensitivity and a threshold for detection below that of previous Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. The characteristics for the phase-I will be presented, together with plans for phase-II of the experiment, comprised of a large telescope in the centre of the current phase-I providing a lowered threshold and increased sensitivity. We can observe AGNs up to redshift 0.5 with HESS and 2-3 with HESS Phase-2, which provides a unique capability for study of spectral and temporal characteristics on timescales of several hours or even less than 1 h (depending on the strength of flares). We will present the first results from a number of southern AGN observed during the installation of the phase-I, in particular concerning the detection and spectral properties of the AGN PKS2155$-$305.Comment: To appear in the Springer-Verlag series "ESO Astrophysics Symposia

The H.E.S.S. View of the Central 200 Parsecs

The inner few hundred parsecs of our galaxy provide a laboratory for the study of the production and propagation of energetic particles. Very-high-energy gamma-rays provide an effective probe of these processes and, especially when combined with data from other wave-bands, gamma-rays observations are a powerful diagnostic tool. Within this central region, data from the H.E.S.S. instrument have revealed three discrete sources of very-high-energy gamma-rays and diffuse emission correlated with the distribution of molecular material. Here I provide an overview of these recent results from H.E.S.S.Comment: Proceedings of the Galactic Centre Workshop 200

Discovery of Very High Energy gamma - ray emission from the extreme BL Lac object H2356-309 with H.E.S.S

The understanding of acceleration mechanisms in active galactic nuclei (AGN) jets and the measurement of the extragalactic-background-light (EBL) density are closely linked and require the detection of a large sample of very-high-energy (VHE) emitting extragalactic objects at varying redshifts. We report here on the discovery with the H.E.S.S. (High Energy Stereoscopic System) atmospheric-Cherenkov telescopes of the VHE Gamma-ray emission from H2356 - 309, an extreme BL Lac object located at a redshift of 0.165. The observations of this object, which was previously proposed as a southern-hemisphere VHE candidate source, were performed between June and December 2004. The total exposure is 38.9 hours live time, after data quality selection, which yields the detection of a signal at the level of 9.0$\sigma$ (standard deviations) .Comment: To appear on proceeding of 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2005

Probing Lorentz Invariance at EeV Energy

Pierre Auger experiment has detected at least a couple of ray events above energy 60 EeV from the direction of the radio-galaxy Centaurus A. Assuming those events are from Centaurus A, we have calculated the number of neutral cosmic ray events from this source for small values of the degree of violation in Lorentz invariance. Our results show that a comparison of our calculated numbers of events with the observed number of events at EeV energy from the direction of the source can probe extremely low value of the degree of this violation.Comment: 8 pages,4 figure

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

Production of Neutrinos and Secondary Electrons in Cosmic Sources

We study the individual contribution to secondary lepton production in hadronic interactions of cosmic rays (CRs) including resonances and heavier secondaries. For this purpose we use the same ethodology discussed earlier \cite{Huang07}, namely the Monte Carlo particle collision code DPMJET3.04 to determine the multiplicity spectra of various secondary particles with leptons as the final decay states, that result from inelastic collisions of cosmic-ray protons and Helium nuclei with the interstellar medium of standard composition. By combining the simulation results with parametric models for secondary particle (with resonances included) for incident cosmic-ray energies below a few GeV, where DPMJET appears unreliable, we thus derive production matrices for all stable secondary particles in cosmic-ray interactions with energies up to about 10 PeV. We apply the production matrices to calculate the radio synchrotron radiation of secondary electrons in a young shell-type SNR, RX J1713.7-3946, which is a measure of the age, the spectral index of hadronic cosmic rays, and most importantly the magnetic field strength. We find that the multi-mG fields recently invoked to explain the X-ray flux variations are unlikely to extend over a large fraction of the radio-emitting region, otherwise the spectrum of hadronic cosmic rays in the energy window 0.1-100 GeV must be unusually hard. We also use the production matrices to calculate the muon event rate in an IceCube-like detector that are induced by muon neutrinos from high-energy $\gamma$-ray sources such as RX J1713.7-3946, Vela Jr. and MGRO J2019+37. At muon energies of a few TeV, or in other word, about 10 TeV neutrino energy, an accumulation of data over about five to ten years would allow testing the hadronic origin of TeV $\gamma$-rays.Comment: 21 Pages; 3 Figures; 1 Table; Astroparticle Physics Minor Revise

Two photon annihilation of Kaluza-Klein dark matter

We investigate the fermionic one-loop cross section for the two photon annihilation of Kaluza-Klein (KK) dark matter particles in a model of universal extra dimensions (UED). This process gives a nearly mono-energetic gamma-ray line with energy equal to the KK dark matter particle mass. We find that the cross section is large enough that if a continuum signature is detected, the energy distribution of gamma-rays should end at the particle mass with a peak that is visible for an energy resolution of the detector at the percent level. This would give an unmistakable signature of a dark matter origin of the gamma-rays, and a unique determination of the dark matter particle mass, which in the case studied should be around 800 GeV. Unlike the situation for supersymmetric models where the two-gamma peak may or may not be visible depending on parameters, this feature seems to be quite robust in UED models, and should be similar in other models where annihilation into fermions is not helicity suppressed. The observability of the signal still depends on largely unknown astrophysical parameters related to the structure of the dark matter halo. If the dark matter near the galactic center is adiabatically contracted by the central star cluster, or if the dark matter halo has substructure surviving tidal effects, prospects for detection look promising.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures; slightly revised versio

Determining Supersymmetric Parameters With Dark Matter Experiments

In this article, we explore the ability of direct and indirect dark matter experiments to not only detect neutralino dark matter, but to constrain and measure the parameters of supersymmetry. In particular, we explore the relationship between the phenomenological quantities relevant to dark matter experiments, such as the neutralino annihilation and elastic scattering cross sections, and the underlying characteristics of the supersymmetric model, such as the values of mu (and the composition of the lightest neutralino), m_A and tan beta. We explore a broad range of supersymmetric models and then focus on a smaller set of benchmark models. We find that by combining astrophysical observations with collider measurements, mu can often be constrained far more tightly than it can be from LHC data alone. In models in the A-funnel region of parameter space, we find that dark matter experiments can potentially determine m_A to roughly +/-100 GeV, even when heavy neutral MSSM Higgs bosons (A, H_1) cannot be observed at the LHC. The information provided by astrophysical experiments is often highly complementary to the information most easily ascertained at colliders.Comment: 46 pages, 76 figure

Diffuse Neutrino and Gamma-ray Emissions of the Galaxy above the TeV

We simulate the neutrino and $\gamma$-ray emissions of the Galaxy which are originated from the hadronic scattering of cosmic rays (CR) with the interstellar medium (ISM). Rather than assuming a uniform CR density, we estimate the spatial distribution of CR nuclei by means of numerical simulations. We consider several models of the galactic magnetic field and of the ISM distribution finding only a weak dependence of our results on their choice. We found that by extrapolating the predicted $\gamma$-ray spectra down to few GeV we get a good agreement with EGRET measurements. Then, we can reliably compare our predictions with available observations above the TeV both for the $\gamma$-rays and the neutrinos. We confirm that the excesses observed by MILAGRO in the Cygnus region and by HESS in the Galactic Centre Ridge cannot be explained without invoking significant CR over-densities in those regions. Finally, we discuss the perspectives that a km$^3$ neutrino telescope based in the North hemisphere has to measure the diffuse emission from the inner Galaxy.Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures. Several figures have been added or replaced. A new model for the ISM distribution has been considered. Accepted for publication in JCA

Dark Matter And Bs→μ+μ−B_s \to \mu^+ \mu^- With Minimal SO10SO_{10} Soft SUSY Breaking II

We update and extend to larger masses our previous analysis of the MSSM with minimal $SO_{10}$ [MSO$_{10}$SM] soft SUSY breaking boundary conditions. We find a well--defined, narrow region of parameter space which provides the observed relic density of dark matter, in a domain selected to fit precision electroweak data, including top, bottom and tau masses. The model is highly constrained which allows us to make several predictions. We find the light Higgs mass $m_h \leq 121 \pm 3$ GeV and also upper bounds on the mass of the gluino \mgluino\lsim3.1 TeV and lightest neutralino \mchi\lsim450 GeV. As the CP odd Higgs mass $m_A$ increases, the region of parameter space consistent with WMAP data is forced to larger values of $M_{1/2}$ and smaller values of $m_h$. Hence, we find an upper bound m_A \lsim 1.3 TeV. This in turn leads to lower bounds on ${\rm BR}(B_s\to \mu^+ \mu^-) > 10^{-8}$ (assuming minimal flavor violation) and on the dark matter spin independent detection cross section \sigsip > 10^{-9} pb. Finally, we extend our previous analysis to include WIMP signals in indirect detection and find prospects for WIMP detection generally much less promising than in direct WIMP searches.Comment: 24 page