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Nayantara Gupta

Publications and source records attributed to Nayantara Gupta.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2017

A lepto-hadronic model of gamma rays from the Eta Carinae and prospects for neutrino telescopes

The stellar binary $η$ Carinae has been observed during its full orbital period in gamma rays by the Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT). The shock-accelerated electrons in the colliding winds of the two stars radiate synchrotron photons in the magnetic field of the shocked region and inverse Compton photons, where the target photons are from the thermal emissions by the more massive and luminous of the two stars. The inverse Compton emission dominates the gamma-ray flux data from the $η$ Carinae, however the spectral energy distribution shows signature of a hadronic component in the $\sim 10$-300 GeV range during the periastron passage. Current and future air Cherenkov telescopes will be able to constrain this component at TeV energies. Acceleration of cosmic-ray protons to $\gg 1$ TeV energies in the colliding winds, required to explain the hadronic emission component through photopion interactions, can lead to detectable signal of $\gtrsim 10$ TeV neutrino events in large kilometer scale neutrino telescopes.

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arXiv2017

Constraints on Proton Synchrotron Origin of Very High Energy Gamma Rays from the Extended Jet of AP Librae

The multi-wavelength photon spectrum from the BL Lac object AP Librae extends from radio to TeV gamma rays. The X-ray to very high energy gamma ray emission from the extended jet of this source has been modeled earlier with inverse Compton (IC) scattering of relativistic electrons off the CMB photons. The IC/CMB model requires the kpc scale extended jet to be highly collimated with bulk Lorentz factor close to 10. Here we discuss the possibility of proton synchrotron origin of X-rays and gamma-rays from the extended jet with bulk Lorentz factor 3. This scenario requires extreme energy of protons and high magnetic field 1 mG of the extended jet with very high jet power in particles and magnetic field (which is more than 100 times the Eddington luminosity of AP Librae) to explain the very high energy gamma ray emission. Moreover, we have shown that X-ray emission from the extended jets of 3C 273 and PKS 0637-752 could be possible by proton synchrotron emission with jet powers comparable to their Eddington luminosities.

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arXiv2017

Long term study of the light curve of PKS 1510-089 in GeV energies

We have analyzed data from the Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar PKS 1510-089 collected over a period of 8 years from August 2008 to December 2016 with the Fermi-LAT. We have identified several flares of this highly variable source, studied their temporal and spectral properties in detail and compared with previous works on flares of PKS 1510-089. Five major flares and few sub-flares/sub-structures have been identified in our study. The fastest variability time is found to be 1.30$\pm$0.18 hr between MJD 55852.063 and 55852.188 where we estimate the minimum size of the emission region to be $4.85 \times 10^{15}$ cm. In most of the flares the spectral energy distributions are better fitted with Logparabolic distribution compared to simple Power law or Power law with exponential cut-offs. This has strong physics implications regarding the nature of the high energy gamma-ray emission region.

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arXiv2016

A Single Zone Synchrotron Model for Flares of PKS 1510-089

PKS 1510-089 is one of the most variable blazars. Very high energy gamma ray emission from this source was observed by H.E.S.S. during March-April 2009 and by MAGIC from February 3 to April 3, 2012 quasi-simultaneously with multi-wavelength flares. The spectral energy distributions of these flares have been modeled earlier with the external Compton mechanism which depends on our knowledge of the densities of the seed photons in the broad line region, the dusty infrared torus or a hypothetical slow sheath surrounding the jet around the radio core. Here we show that to explain the multi-wavelength data with synchrotron emission of electrons and protons the jet power should be of the order of 10^48 ergs/sec.

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arXiv2016

High Energy Neutrinos from the Gravitational Wave event GW150914 possibly associated with a short Gamma-Ray Burst

High-energy neutrino (HEN) and gravitational wave (GW) can probe astrophysical sources in addition to electromagnetic observations. Multimessenger studies can reveal nature of the sources which may not be discerned from one type of signal alone. We discuss HEN emission in connection with the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (ALIGO) event GW150914 which could be associated with a short gamma-ray burst (GRB) detected by the $Fermi$ Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) 0.4 s after the GW event and within localization uncertainty of the GW event. We calculate HEN flux from this short GRB, GW150914-GBM, and show that non-detection of a high-energy starting event (HESE) by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory can constrain the total isotropic-equivalent jet energy of this short burst to be less than $3\times 10^{52}$ erg.

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arXiv2015

Proton Synchrotron Radiation from Extended Jets of PKS 0637-752 and 3C 273

Recently, the IC/CMB X-ray mechanism has been strongly disfavoured for 3C 273 and PKS 0637-752 since the anomalously hard and steady gamma-ray emission predicted by such models violates the observational results from Fermi-LAT. Here we propose the proton synchrotron origin of the X ray-gamma ray flux from the knots of PKS 0637-752 with a reasonable budget in luminosity, by considering synchrotron radiation from an accelerated proton population. Moreover, for the source 3C 273, some of the optical data points could not be explained by electron synchrotron (Meyer et al. 2015), which we have included in our updated proton synchrotron model. We also show that TeV emission from large scale quasar jets in principle, can arise from proton synchrotron, which we discuss in the context of knot wk8.9 of PKS 0637-752.

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arXiv2015

Very High Energy Antineutrinos from Photo-disintegration of Cosmic Ray Nuclei

The photo-disintegration of cosmic ray nuclei by starlight leads to the production of secondary antineutrinos. We have assumed that the flux of the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray nuclei near the Galactic plane region is the same as that observed near the earth and calculated the antineutrino flux produced from their photo-disintegration. The IceCube detector has measured the neutrino/antineutrino flux in the TeV-PeV energy range. Our calculated secondary antineutrino flux in the energy range of 10-100 TeV is found to be much less compared to the flux detected by the IceCube collaboration. The upper limit on the intensity of the radiation field in the extragalactic medium is much lower than that near the Galactic center. If we extend our formalism to the extragalactic medium the contribution from the photo-disintegration of ultrahigh energy cosmic ray heavy nuclei remains insignificant due to their very low flux.

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arXiv2015

Cosmic Ray Antiprotons from Nearby Cosmic Accelerators

The antiproton flux measured by PAMELA experiment might have originated from Galactic sources of cosmic rays. These antiprotons are expected to be produced in the interactions of cosmic ray protons and nuclei with cold protons. Gamma rays are also produced in similar interactions inside some of the cosmic acceleratos. We consider a few nearby supernova remnants observed by Fermi LAT. Many of them are associated with molecular clouds. Gamma rays have been detected from these sources which most likely originate in decay of neutral pions produced in hadronic interactions. The observed gamma ray fluxes from these SNRs are used to find out their contributions to the observed diffuse cosmic ray antiproton flux near the earth.

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arXiv2014

How Many of the Observed Neutrino Events Can Be Described by Cosmic Ray Interactions in the Milky Way?

Cosmic rays diffuse through the interstellar medium and interact with matter and radiations as long as they are trapped in the Galactic magnetic field. The IceCube experiment has detected some TeV-PeV neutrino events whose origin is yet unknown. We study if all or a fraction of these events can be described by the interactions of cosmic rays with matter. We consider the average target density needed to explain them for different halo sizes and shapes, the effect of the chemical composition of the cosmic rays, the impact of the directional information of the neutrino events, and the constraints from gamma ray bounds and their direction. We do not require knowledge of the cosmic ray escape time or injection for our approach. We find that, given all constraints, at most 0.1 of the observed neutrino events in Ice-Cube can be described by cosmic ray interactions with matter. In addition, we demonstrate that the currently established chemical composition of the cosmic rays contradicts a peak of the neutrino spectrum at PeV energies.

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arXiv2014

Possible Proton Synchrotron Origin of X-Ray & Gamma Ray Emission in Large Scale Jet of 3C 273

The large scale jet of quasar 3C 273 has been observed in radio to $γ$ ray frequencies. Earlier the X-ray emission from knot A of this jet has been explained with inverse Compton scattering of the cosmic microwave background radiations by the shock accelerated relativistic electrons in the jet. More recently it has been shown that this mechanism overproduces the gamma ray flux at GeV energy and violates the observational results from Fermi LAT. We have considered the synchrotron emission from a broken power law spectrum of accelerated protons in the jet to explain the observed X-ray to $γ$ ray flux from knot A. The two scenarios discussed in our work are (i) magnetic field is high, synchrotron energy loss time of the protons is shorter than their escape time from the knot region and the age of the jet (ii) their escape time is shorter than their synchrotron energy loss time and the age of the jet. These scenarios can explain the observed photon spectrum well for moderate values of Doppler factor. The required jet luminosity is high $\sim 10^{46}$ erg/sec in the first scenario and moderate $\sim 10^{45}$ erg/sec in the second, which makes the second scenario more favorable.

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arXiv2014

Photo-Disintegration of Heavy Nuclei at the Core of Cen A

Fermi LAT has detected gamma ray emissions from the core of Cen A. More recently, a new component in the gamma ray spectrum from the core has been reported in the energy range of 4 GeV to tens of GeV. We show that the new component and the HESS detected spectrum of gamma rays from the core at higher energy have possibly a common origin in photo-disintegration of heavy nuclei. Assuming the cosmic rays are mostly Fe nuclei inside the core and their spectrum has a low energy cut-off at 52 TeV in the wind frame moving with a Doppler factor 0.25 with respect to the observer on earth, the cosmic ray luminosity required to explain the observed gamma ray flux above 1 GeV is found to be $1.5\times 10^{43}$ erg/sec.

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arXiv2013

The Galactic Wind Haze and its $γ$-spectrum

We study the possibility that the gamma ray emission in the Fermi bubbles observed is produced by cosmic ray electrons with a spectrum similar to Galactic cosmic rays. We argue that the cosmic ray electrons steepen near 1 TeV from $E^{-3}$ to about $E^{-4.2}$, and are partially secondaries derived from the knee-feature of normal cosmic rays. We speculate that the observed feature at $\sim 130$ GeV could essentially be due to inverse Compton emission off a pair-production peak on top of a turn-off in the $γ$ ray spectrum at $\sim 130$ GeV. It suggests that the knee of normal cosmic rays is the same everywhere in the Galaxy. A consequence could be that all supernovae contributing give the same cosmic ray spectrum, with the knee feature given by common stellar properties; in fact, this is consistent with the supernova theory proposed by Bisnovatyi-Kogan (1970), a magneto-rotational mechanism, if massive stars converge to common properties in terms of rotation and magnetic fields just before they explode.

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arXiv2013

Galactic PeV Neutrinos

IceCube experiment has detected two neutrinos with energies beween 1-10 PeV. They might have originated from Galactic or extragalactic sources of cosmic rays. In the present work we consider hadronic interactions of the diffuse very high energy cosmic rays with the interstellar matter within our Galaxy to explain the PeV neutrino events detected in IceCube. We also expect PeV gamma ray events along with the PeV neutrino events if the observed PeV neutrinos were produced within our Galaxy in hadronic interactions. PeV gamma rays are unlikely to reach us from sources outside our Galaxy due to pair production with cosmic background radiations. We suggest that in future with simultaneous detections of PeV gamma rays and neutrinos it would be possible to distinguish between Galactic and extragalactic origins of very high energy neutrinos.

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arXiv2013

Testing Hadronic Models of Gamma Ray Production at the Core of Cen A

Pierre Auger experiment has observed a few cosmic ray events above 55 EeV from the direction of the core of Cen A. These cosmic rays might have originated from the core of Cen A. High energy gamma ray emission has been observed by HESS from the radio core and inner kpc jets of Cen A. We are testing whether pure hadronic interactions of protons or heavy nuclei with the matter in the core region or photo-disintegration of heavy nuclei can explain the cosmic ray and high energy gamma ray observations from the core of Cen A. The scenario of $p-γ$ interactions followed by photo-pion decay has been tested earlier by Sahu et al. (2012) and found to be consistent with the observational results. In this paper we have considered some other possibilities (i) the primary cosmic rays at the core of Cen A are protons and the high energy gamma rays are produced in $p-p$ interactions,(ii) the primary cosmic rays are Fe nuclei and the high energy gamma rays are produced in $Fe-p$ interactions and (iii) the primary cosmic rays are Fe nuclei and they are photo-disintegrated at the core. The daughter nuclei de-excite and high energy gamma rays are produced.

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arXiv2012

Spectrum and ionization rate of low energy Galactic cosmic rays

We consider the rate of ionization of diffuse and molecular clouds in the interstellar medium by Galactic cosmic rays (GCR) in order to constrain its low energy spectrum. We extrapolate the GCR spectrum obtained from PAMELA at high energies ($\ge 200$ GeV/ nucleon) and a recently derived GCR proton flux at $1\hbox{--}200$ GeV from observations of gamma rays from molecular clouds, and find that the observed average Galactic ionization rate can be reconciled with this GCR spectrum if there is a low energy cutoff for protons at $10\hbox{--}100$ MeV. We also identify the flattening below a few GeV as being due to (a) decrease of the diffusion coefficient and dominance of convective loss at low energy and (b) the expected break in energy spectrum for a constant spectral index in momentum. We show that the inferred CR proton spectrum of $Φ\propto E_{kin}^{-1.7\pm0.2}$ for $E_{kin} \le$ few GeV, is consistent with a power-law spectrum in momentum $p^{-2.45\pm0.4}$, which we identify as the spectrum at source. Diffusion loss at higher energies then introduces a steepening by $E^{-α}$ with $α\sim 1/3$, making it consistent with high energy measurements.

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arXiv2012

Neutrinos from Decaying Muons, Pions, Kaons and Neutrons in Gamma Ray Bursts

In the internal shock model of gamma ray bursts ultrahigh energy muons, pions, neutrons and kaons are likely to be produced in the interactions of shock accelerated relativistic protons with low energy photons (KeV-MeV). These particles subsequently decay to high energy neutrinos/antineutrinos and other secondaries. In the high internal magnetic fields of gamma ray bursts, the ultrahigh energy charged particles ($μ^+$, $π^+$, $K^+$) lose energy significantly due to synchrotron radiations before decaying into secondary high energy neutrinos and antineutrinos. The relativistic neutrons decay to high energy antineutrinos, protons and electrons. We have calculated the total neutrino flux (neutrino and antineutrino) considering the decay channels of ultrahigh energy muons, pions, neutrons and kaons. We have shown that the total neutrino flux generated in neutron decay can be higher than that produced in $μ^+$ and $π^+$ decay. The charged kaons being heavier than pions, lose energy slowly and their secondary total neutrino flux is more than that from muons and pions at very high energy. Our detailed calculations on secondary particle production in $pγ$ interactions give the total neutrino fluxes and their flavour ratios expected on earth. Depending on the values of the parameters (luminosity, Lorentz factor, variability time, spectral indices and break energy in the photon spectrum) of a gamma ray burst the contributions to the total neutrino flux from the decay of different particles (muon, pion, neutron and kaon) may vary and they would also be reflected on the neutrino flavour ratios.

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arXiv2011

PeV Gamma Rays from Interactions of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays in the Milky Way

The PeV gamma ray background produced in the interactions of ultra high energy cosmic rays with the ambient matter and radiations during their propagation in the Milky Way has been calculated in this paper. If the primary ultra high energy cosmic rays are produced from Galactic point sources then those point sources are also emitting PeV gamma rays. We discuss that the detection of galactocentric PeV gamma rays in the future would be a signature of the presence of EeV cosmic accelerators in the Milky Way.

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