arXiv subjects

Qiang Yuan

Publications and source records attributed to Qiang Yuan.

At least 199 records · Page 11Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

Cosmic ray spectral hardening due to dispersion of source injection spectra

The cosmic ray (CR) energy spectra measured with ATIC, CREAM and PAMELA showed that there is remarkable hardening for rigidity of several hundred GV. We propose that this hardening is due to the superposition of spectra from a population of sources, e.g., supernova remnants (SNRs), whose injection spectral indices have a dispersion. Adopting proper model parameters the observational data can be well explained. It is interesting that the injection source parameters are similar with that derived from gamma-ray observations of SNRs, which may support the SNR-origin of CRs. Furthermore this mechanism provides an alternative explanation of the "ankle-cutoff" structure of the ultra high energy CR spectra.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2011

A statistical model to explain the gamma-ray variability and flares of the Crab nebula

Recently the AGILE and Fermi/LAT detectors uncovered giant $γ$-ray flares from the Crab nebula. The duration of these flares is a few days. The Fermi/LAT data with monthly time binning further showed significant variability of the synchrotron tail of the emission, while the inverse Compton component was stable. The simultaneous or follow-up observations in X-ray, optical, infrared and radio bands did not find significant flux variation. Based on these observations, we propose that the $γ$-ray variability and flares are due to statistical fluctuations of knots that can accelerate electrons to $\sim$PeV energies. The maximum achievable energy of electrons is adopted to be proportional to the size of the knot, which is assumed to follow a power-law distribution. Thus the low energy electron flux will be stable due to the large number of small knots, while the high energy electron flux may experience large fluctuations. Monte Carlo realization of such a picture can reproduce the observational data quite well given proper model parameters.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2011

Cosmic ray spectral hardening due to dispersion in the source injection spectra

Recent cosmic ray (CR) experiments discovered that the CR spectra experience a remarkable hardening for rigidity above several hundred GV. We propose that this is caused by the superposition of the CR energy spectra of many sources that have a dispersion in the injection spectral indices. Adopting similar parameters as those of supernova remnants derived from the Fermi $γ$-ray observations, we can reproduce the observational CR spectra of different species well. This may be interpreted as evidence to support the supernova remnant origin of CRs below the knee. We further propose that the same mechanism may explain the "ankle" of the ultra high energy CR spectrum.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2011

Breit-Wigner Enhancement Considering the Dark Matter Kinetic Decoupling

In the paper we study the Breit-Wigner enhancement of dark matter (DM) annihilation considering the kinetic decoupling in the evolution of DM freeze-out at the early universe. Since the DM temperature decreases much faster (as $1/R^2$) after kinetic decoupling than that in kinetic equilibrium (as 1/R) we find the Breit-Wigner enhancement of DM annihilation rate after the kinetic decoupling will affect the DM relic density significantly. Focusing on the model parameters that trying to explain the anomalous cosmic positron/electron excesses observed by PAMELA/Fermi/ATIC we find the elastic scattering $Xf\to Xf$ is not efficient to keep dark matter in kinetic equilibrium, and the kinetic decoupling temperature $T_{kd}$ is comparable to the chemical decoupling temperature $T_f\sim O(10) GeV$. The reduction of the relic density after $T_{kd}$ is significant and leads to a limited enhancement factor $\sim O(10^2)$. Therefore it is difficult to explain the anomalous positron/electron excesses in cosmic rays by DM annihilation and give the correct DM relic density simultaneously in the minimal Breit-Wigner enhancement model.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Modeling the Multi-Wavelength Emission of Shell-Type Supernova Remnant RX J1713.7-3946

Emission mechanisms of the shell-type supernova remnant (SNR) RX J1713.7-3946 are studied with multi-wavelength observational data from radio, X-ray, GeV $γ$-ray to TeV $γ$-ray band. A Markov Chain Monte Carlo method is employed to explore the high-dimensional model parameter space systematically. Three scenarios for the $γ$-ray emission are investigated: the leptonic, the hadronic and a hybrid one. Thermal emission from the background plasma is also included to constrain the gas density, assuming ionization equilibrium, and a 2$σ$ upper limit of about 0.03 cm$^{-3}$ is obtained as far as thermal energies account for a significant fraction of the dissipated kinetic energy of the SNR shock. Although systematic errors dominate the $χ^2$ of the spectral fit of all models, we find that 1) the leptonic model has the best constrained model parameters, whose values can be easily accommodated with a typical supernova, but gives relatively poor fit to the TeV $γ$-ray data; 2) The hybrid scenario has one more parameter than the leptonic one and improves the overall spectral fit significantly; 3) The hadronic one, which has three more parameters than the leptonic model, gives the best fit to the overall spectrum with relatively not-well-constrained model parameters and very hard spectra of accelerated particles. The uncertainties of the model parameters decrease significantly if the spectral indices of accelerated electrons and protons are the same. The hybrid and hadronic models also require an energy input into high-energy protons, which seems to be too high compared with typical values of a supernova explosion. Further investigations are required to reconcile these observations with SNR theories.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2011

Constraint on dark matter annihilation with dark star formation using Fermi extragalactic diffuse gamma-ray background data

It has been proposed that during the formation of the first generation stars there might be a "dark star" phase in which the power of the star comes from dark matter annihilation. The adiabatic contraction process to form the dark star would result in a highly concentrated density profile of the host halo at the same time, which may give enhanced indirect detection signals of dark matter. In this work we investigate the extragalactic $γ$-ray background from dark matter annihilation with such a dark star formation scenario, and employ the isotropic $γ$-ray data from Fermi-LAT to constrain the model parameters of dark matter. The results suffer from large uncertainties of both the formation rate of the first generation stars and the subsequent evolution effects of the host halos of the dark stars. We find, in the most optimistic case for $γ$-ray production via dark matter annihilation, the expected extragalactic $γ$-ray flux will be enhanced by 1-2 orders of magnitude. In such a case, the annihilation cross section of the supersymmetric dark matter can be constrained to the thermal production level, and the leptonic dark matter model which is proposed to explain the positron/electron excesses can be well excluded. Conversely, if the positron/electron excesses are of a dark matter annihilation origin, then the early Universe environment is such that no dark star can form.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2011

Neutrino emission of Fermi supernova remnants

The Fermi $γ$-ray space telescope reported the observation of several Galactic supernova remnants recently, with the $γ$-ray spectra well described by hadronic $pp$ collisions. The possible neutrino emissions from these Fermi detected supernova remnants are discussed in this work, assuming the hadronic origin of the $γ$-ray emission. The muon event rates induced by the neutrinos from these supernova remnants on typical km$^3$ neutrino telescopes, such as the IceCube and the KM3NeT, are calculated. The results show that for most of these supernova remnants the neutrino signals are too weak to be detected by the on-going or up-coming neutrino experiment. Only for the TeV bright sources RX J1713.7-3946 and possibly W28 the neutrino signals can be comparable with the atmospheric background in the TeV region, if the protons can be accelerated to very high energies. The northern hemisphere based neutrino telescope might detect the neutrinos from these two sources.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2011

A statistical model for the $γ$-ray variability of the Crab nebula

A statistical scenario is proposed to explain the $γ$-ray variability and flares of the Crab nebula, which were observed recently by the Fermi/LAT. In this scenario electrons are accelerated in a series of knots, whose sizes follow a power-law distribution. These knots presumably move outwards from the pulsar and have a distribution in the Doppler boost factor. The maximal electron energy is assumed to be proportional to the size of the knot. Fluctuations at the highest energy end of the overall electron distribution will result in variable $γ$-ray emission via the synchrotron process in the $\sim 100$ MeV range. Since highly boosted larger knots are rarer than smaller knots, the model predicts that the variability of the synchrotron emission increases with the photon energy. We realize such a scenario with a Monte-Carlo simulation and find that the model can reproduce both the two $γ$-ray flares over a period of $\sim$ year and the monthly scale $γ$-ray flux fluctuations as observed by the Fermi/LAT. The observed $γ$-ray spectra in both the steady and flaring states are also well reproduced.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2010

Dark matter annihilation and non-thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect: II. dwarf spheroidal galaxy

We calculate the CMB temperature distortion due to the energetic electrons and positrons produced by dark matter annihilation (Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect), in dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). In the calculation we have included two important effects which were previously ignored. First we show that the electron-positron pairs with energy less than GeV, which were neglected in previous calculation, could contribute a significant fraction of the total signal. Secondly we also consider the full effects of diffusion loss, which could significantly reduce the density of electron-positron pairs at the center of cuspy halos. For neutralinos, we confirm that detecting such kind of SZ effect is beyond the capability of the current or even the next generation experiments. In the case of light dark matter (LDM) the signal is much larger, but even in this case it is only marginally detectable with the next generation of experiment such as ALMA. We conclude that similar to the case of galaxy clusters, in the dwarf galaxies the $SZ_2DM}$ effect is not a strong probe of DM annihilations.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

Leptonic dark matter annihilation in the evolving universe: constraints and implications

The cosmic electron and positron excesses have been explained as possible dark matter (DM) annihilation products. In this work we investigate the possible effects of such a DM annihilation scenario during the evolution history of the Universe. We first calculate the extragalactic $γ$-ray background (EGRB), which is produced through the final state radiation of DM annihilation to charged leptons and the inverse Compton scattering between electrons/positrons and the cosmic microwave background. The DM halo profile and the minimal halo mass, which are not yet well determined from the current N-body simulations, are constrained by the EGRB data from EGRET and Fermi telescopes. Then we discuss the impact of such leptonic DM models on cosmic evolution, such as the reionization and heating of intergalactic medium, neutral Hydrogen 21 cm signal and suppression of structure formation. We show that the impact on the Hydrogen 21 cm signal might show interesting signatures of DM annihilation, but the influence on star formation is not remarkable. Future observations of the 21 cm signals could be used to place new constraints on the properties of DM.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

On the Detectability of Galactic Dark Matter Annihilation into Monochromatic Gamma-rays

Monochromatic gamma-rays are thought to be the smoking gun signal for identifying the dark matter annihilation. However, the flux of monochromatic gamma-rays is usually suppressed by the virtual quantum effects since dark matter should be neutral and does not couple with gamma-rays directly. In the work we study the detection strategy of the monochromatic gamma-rays in a future space-based detector. The monochromatic gamma-ray flux is calculated by assuming supersymmetric neutralino as a typical dark matter candidate. We discuss both the detection focusing on the Galactic center and in a scan mode which detects gamma-rays from the whole Galactic halo are compared. The detector performance for the purpose of monochromatic gamma-rays detection, with different energy and angular resolution, field of view, background rejection efficiencies, is carefully studied with both analytical and fast Monte-Carlo method.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2010

Lepton Models for TeV Emission from SNR RX J1713.7-3946

(Aims.) SNR RX J1713.7-3946 is perhaps one of the best observed shell-type supernova remnants with emissions dominated by energetic particles accelerated near the shock front. The nature of the TeV emission, however, is an issue still open to investigation. (Methods.) We carry out a systematic study of four lepton models for the TeV emission with the Markov chain Monte Carlo method. (Results.) It is shown that current data already give good constraints on the model parameters. Two commonly used parametric models do not appear to fit the observed radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray spectra. Models motivated by diffusive shock acceleration and by stochastic acceleration by compressive waves in the shock downstream give comparably good fits. The former has a sharper spectral cutoff in the hard X-ray band than the latter. Future observations with the HXMT and NuSTAR may distinguish these two models.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2010

Galactic diffuse gamma rays --- recalculation based on the new measurements of cosmic electron spectrum

In this work, we revisit the all-sky Galactic diffuse $γ$-ray emission taking into account the new measurements of cosmic ray electron/positron spectrum by PAMELA, ATIC and Fermi, which show excesses of cosmic electrons/positrons beyond the expected fluxes in the conventional model. Since the origins of the extra electrons/positrons are not clear, we consider three different scenarios to account for the excesses: the astrophysical sources such as the Galactic pulsars, dark matter decay and annihilation. Further, new results from Fermi-LAT of the (extra-)Galactic diffuse $γ$-ray are adopted. The background cosmic rays without the new sources give lower diffuse $γ$ rays compared to Fermi-LAT observation, which is consistent with previous analysis. The scenario with astrophysical sources predicts diffuse $γ$-rays with little difference with the background. The dark matter annihilation models with $τ^{\pm}$ final state are disfavored by the Fermi diffuse $γ$-ray data, while there are only few constraints on the decaying dark matter scenario. Furthermore, these is always a bump at higher energies ($\sim$ TeV) of the diffuse $γ$-ray spectra for the dark matter scenarios due to final state radiation. Finally we find that the Fermi-LAT diffuse $γ$-ray data can be explained by simply enlarging the normalization of the electron spectrum without introduce any new sources, which may indicate that the current constraints on the dark matter models can be much stronger given a precise background estimate.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2010

Gamma rays and neutrinos from dark matter annihilation in galaxy clusters

The $γ$-ray and neutrino emissions from dark matter (DM) annihilation in galaxy clusters are studied. After about one year operation of Fermi-LAT, several nearby clusters are reported with stringent upper limits of GeV $γ$-ray emission. We use the Fermi-LAT upper limits of these clusters to constrain the DM model parameters. We find that the DM model distributed with substructures predicted in cold DM (CDM) scenario is strongly constrained by Fermi-LAT $γ$-ray data. Especially for the leptonic annihilation scenario which may account for the $e^{\pm}$ excesses discovered by PAMELA/Fermi-LAT/HESS, the constraint on the minimum mass of substructures is of the level $10^2-10^3$ M$_{\odot}$, which is much larger than that expected in CDM picture, but is consistent with a warm DM scenario. We further investigate the sensitivity of neutrino detections of the clusters by IceCube. It is found that neutrino detection is much more difficult than $γ$-rays. Only for very heavy DM ($\sim 10$ TeV) together with a considerable branching ratio to line neutrinos the neutrino sensitivity is comparable with that of $γ$-rays.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2010

A study on the sharp knee and fine structures of cosmic ray spectra

The paper investigates the overall and detailed features of cosmic ray (CR) spectra in the knee region using the scenario of nuclei-photon interactions around the acceleration sources. Young supernova remnants can be the physical realities of such kind of CR acceleration sites. The results show that the model can well explain the following problems simultaneously with one set of source parameters: the knee of CR spectra and the sharpness of the knee, the detailed irregular structures of CR spectra, the so-called "component B" of Galactic CRs, and the electron/positron excesses reported by recent observations. The coherent explanation serves as evidence that at least a portion of CRs might be accelerated at the sources similar to young supernova remnants, and one set of source parameters indicates that this portion mainly comes from standard sources or from a single source.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2010

A Markov Chain Monte Carlo Study on Dark Matter Property Related to the Cosmic e$^{\pm}$ Excesses

In this paper we develop a Markov Chain Monte Carlo code to study the dark matter properties in interpreting the recent observations of cosmic ray electron/positron excesses. We assume that the dark matter particles couple dominantly to leptons and consider two cases separately with annihilating or decaying into lepton pairs. The constraint on the central density profile from diffuse $γ$-rays around the Galactic center is also included in the Markov Chain Monte Carlo code self-consistently. In the numerical study, 7 parameters are introduced. We fit two data sets independently and find that for the Data set I (PAMELA+ATIC), dark matter with $m_χ\approx0.7$ TeV for annihilation (or 1.4 TeV for decay) and pure $e^+e^-$ channel is favored, while for the Data set II (PAMELA+Fermi-LAT+H.E.S.S.) $m_χ\approx 2$ TeV for annihilation (or 4 TeV for decay) and the combination of $μ^+μ^-$ and $τ^+τ^-$ final states can best fit the data. The H.E.S.S. observation of the Galactic center $γ$-rays puts a strong constraint on the central density profile of the dark matter halo for the annihilation dark matter scenario. In this case the NFW profile which is regarded as the typical predication from the cold dark matter scenario, is excluded with a high significance ($>5σ$). For the decaying dark matter scenario, the constraint is much weaker.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2009

Clumpiness enhancement of charged cosmic rays from dark matter annihilation with Sommerfeld effect

Boost factors of dark matter annihilation into antiprotons and electrons/positrons due to the clumpiness of dark matter distribution are studied in detail in this work, taking the Sommerfeld effect into account. It has been thought that the Sommerfeld effect, if exists, will be more remarkable in substructures because they are colder than the host halo, and may result in a larger boost factor. We give a full calculation of the boost factors based on the recent N-body simulations. Three typical cases of Sommerfeld effects, the non-resonant, moderately resonant and strongly resonant cases are considered. We find that for the non-resonant and moderately resonant cases the enhancement effects of substructures due to the Sommerfeld effect are very small ($\sim \mathcal{O}(1)$) because of the saturation behavior of the Sommerfeld effect. For the strongly resonant case the boost factor is typically smaller than $\sim \mathcal{O}(10)$. However, it is possible in some very extreme cases that DM distribution is adopted to give the maximal annihilation the boost factor can reach up to $\sim 1000$. The variances of the boost factors due to different realizations of substructures distribution are also discussed in the work.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2009

Cosmology from very high energy $γ$-rays

In this work we study how the cosmological parameter, the Hubble constant $H_0$, can be constrained by observation of very high energy (VHE) $γ$-rays at the TeV scale. The VHE $γ$-rays experience attenuation by background radiation field through $e^+e^-$ pair production during the propagation in the intergalactic space. This effect is proportional to the distance that the VHE $γ$-rays go through. Therefore the absorption of TeV $γ$-rays can be taken as cosmological distance indicator to constrain the cosmological parameters. Two blazars Mrk 501 and 1ES 1101-232, which have relatively good spectra measurements by the atmospheric Cerenkov telescope, are studied to constrain $H_0$. The mechanism constraining the Hubble constant adopted here is very different from the previous methods such as the observations of type Ia supernovae and the cosmic microwave background. However, at $2σ$ level, our result is consistent with other methods.

astro-ph↗