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Xiang-Yu Wang

Publications and source records attributed to Xiang-Yu Wang.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

The white-light superflares from cool stars in GWAC triggers

M-type stars are the ones that flare most frequently, but how big their maximum flare energy can reach is still unknown. We present 163 flares from 162 individual M2 through L1-type stars that triggered the GWAC, with flare energies ranging from $10^{32.2}$ to $10^{36.4}$ erg . The flare amplitudes range from $\triangle G = 0.84$ to $\sim 10$ mag. Flare energy increases with stellar surface temperature ($T_{\rm eff}$) but both $\triangle G$ and equivalent duration $\log_{10}(ED)$ seem to be independent of $T_{\rm eff}$. Combining periods detected from light curves of TESS and K2, spectra from LAMOST, SDSS and the 2.16 m Telescope, and the Gaia DR3 data, we found that these GWAC flare stars are young. For the stars that have spectra, we found that these stars are in or very near to the saturation region, and $\log_{10}(L_{\rm Hα}/L_{\rm bol})$ is lower for M7-L1 stars than for M2-M6 stars. We also studied the relation between GWAC flare bolometric energy $E_{\rm bol}$ and stellar hemispherical area $S$, and found that $\log_{10}E_{\rm bol}$ (in erg) increases with increasing $S$ (in cm$^2$), and the maximum flare energy $\log_{10}E_{\rm bol, max} \geqslant \log_{10}S + 14.25$. For M7-L1 stars, there seem to be other factors limiting their maximum flare energies in addition to stellar hemispherical area.

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Choked precessing jets in tidal disruption events and high-energy neutrinos

It has been suggested that relativistic jets might have been commonly formed in tidal disruption events (TDEs), but those with relatively weak power could be choked by the surrounding envelope. The discovery of high-energy neutrinos possibly associated with some normal TDEs may support this picture in the hypothesis that the neutrinos are produced by choked jets. Recently, it was noted that disrupted stars generally have misaligned orbits with respect to the supermassive black hole spin axis and highly misaligned precessing jets are more likely to be choked. Here we revisit the jet break-out condition for misaligned precessing jets by considering the jet could be collimated by the cocoon pressure while propagating in the disk wind envelope. The jet head opening angle decreases as the jet propagates in the envelope, but the minimum power of a successful jet remains unchanged in terms of the physical jet power. We further calculate the neutrino flux from choked precessing jets, assuming that the cocoon energy does not exceed the kinetic energy of the disk wind. We find that neutrino flux from highly misaligned choked jets is sufficient to explain the neutrinos from AT2019aalc, while it is marginal to explain the neutrinos from AT2019dsg and AT2019fdr. The latter could be produced by weakly misaligned choked jets, since the duty cycle that the jet sweeps across increases as the misaligned angle decreases. We also show that the population of choked TDE jets could contribute to ~10% of the observed diffuse neutrino flux measured by IceCube.

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A Narrow Uniform Core with a Wide Structured Wing: Modeling the TeV and Multi-wavelength Afterglows of GRB 221009A

The TeV afterglow of the BOAT GRB 221009A was interpreted as arising from a narrow jet while the radio to X-ray afterglows were interpreted as arising from a wide structured jet. However, there is no model explaining the TeV and lower-energy multi-wavelength afterglows simultaneously. We here investigate a two-component jet model, including a narrow uniform core with a wide structured wing, to explain both the multi-wavelength afterglows that last up to 100 days. We find that to explain the early TeV afterglow with the inverse-Compton process, we need a circum-burst density higher than $\gtrsim 0.1{\rm cm^{-3}}$, while the radio afterglow and the H.E.S.S. upper limit combine to constrain the density to be lower at larger radii. Thus, a decreasing density profile with radius is favored. Considering that the rising TeV light curve during the afterglow onset favors a constant-density medium, we invoke a stratified density profile, including a constant-density profile at small radii and a wind density profile at large radii. We find that the two-component jet model with such a stratified density profile can explain the TeV, X-ray and optical afterglows of GRB 221009A, although the radio fluxes exceed the observed ones by a factor of two at later epochs. The discrepancy in the radio afterglow could be resolved by invoking some non-standard assumption about the microphysics of afterglow shocks. The total kinetic energy of the two components in our model is $\lesssim 10^{52}{\rm erg}$, significantly smaller than that in the single structured jet models.

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Insights from LHAASO and IceCube into the origin of the Galactic diffuse TeV--PeV emission

The high-energy diffuse gamma-ray emission and neutrino emission are expected from the Galactic plane, generated by hadronuclear interactions between cosmic rays (CR) and interstellar medium (ISM). Therefore, measurements of these diffuse emissions will provide important clues on the origin and nature of Galactic CRs. Comparing the latest observations of LHAASO and IceCube on the diffuse Galactic gamma-ray and neutrino emissions respectively, we suggest that the diffuse gamma-ray emission at multi-TeV energies contains a considerable contribution of a leptonic component. By modelling the gamma-ray halos powered by middle-aged pulsars in our Galaxy with taking into account the magnetic field configuration and the interstellar radiation field in the Galaxy, we demonstrate that the collective contribution of pulsar halos can account for the excess in the measured diffuse gamma-ray emission with respect to the predicted flux from CR-ISM interactions. The resulting one-dimensional profile along the Galactic longitude is also consistent with the observation.

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Evidence for a compact stellar merger origin for GRB 230307A from Fermi-LAT and multi-wavelength afterglow observations

GRB 230307A is the second brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever detected over 50 years of observations and has a long duration in the prompt emission. Two galaxies are found to be close to the position of GRB 230307A: 1) a distant ($z \sim 3.87$) star-forming galaxy, located at an offset of $\sim 0.2\operatorname{-}0.3$ arcsec from the GRB position (with a projected distance of $\sim 1\operatorname{-}2 \, \rm kpc$); 2) a nearby ($z= 0.065$) spiral galaxy, located at an offset of 30 arcsec (with a projected distance of $\sim 40 \, \rm kpc$). Though it has been found that the brightest GRBs are readily detected in GeV emission by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT), we find no GeV afterglow emission from GRB 230307A. Combining this with the optical and X-ray afterglow data, we find that a circum-burst density as low as $\sim 10^{-5} \operatorname{-} 10^{-4}~{\rm cm^{-3}}$ is needed to explain the non-detection of GeV emission and the multi-wavelength afterglow data, regardless of the redshift of this GRB. Such a low-density disfavors the association of GRB 230307A with the high-redshift star-forming galaxy, since the proximity of the GRB position to this galaxy would imply a higher-density environment. Instead, the low-density medium is consistent with the circumgalactic medium, which agrees with the large offset between GRB 230307A and the low-redshift galaxy. This points to the compact stellar merger origin for GRB 230307A, consistent with the detection of an associated kilonova.

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The BOAT GRB 221009A: a Poynting-Flux-Dominated Narrow Jet Surrounded by a Matter-Dominated Structured Jet Wing

We argue that the broad-band observations of the brightest-of-all-time (BOAT) GRB 221009A reveal a physical picture involving two jet components: a narrow ($\sim 0.6$ degree half opening angle) pencil-beam jet that has a Poynting-flux-dominated jet composition, and a broader matter-dominated jet with an angular structure. We discuss various observational evidence that supports such a picture. To treat the problem, we develop an analytical structured jet model for both forward and reverse shock emission from the matter dominated structured jet wing during the deceleration phase. We discuss the physical implications of such a two-component jet configuration for this particular burst and for GRBs in general. We argue that some bright X-ray flares could be similar narrow jets viewed slightly outside the narrow jet cone and that narrow jets may exist in many more GRBs without being detected.

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Could the TeV emission of starburst galaxies originate from pulsar wind nebulae?

While the GeV $γ$-ray emission of starburst galaxies (SBG) is commonly thought to arise from hadronic interactions between accelerated cosmic rays and interstellar gas, the origin of the TeV $γ$-ray emission is more uncertain. One possibility is that a population of pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) in these galaxies could be responsible for the TeV $γ$-ray emission. In this work, we first synthesize a PWNe population in the Milky Way, and assessed their contribution to the $γ$-ray emission of the Galaxy, using a time-dependent model to calculate the evolution of the PWN population. Such synthetic PWN population can reproduce the flux distribution of identified PWNe in the Milky Way given a distribution of the initial state of the pulsar population. We then apply it to starburst galaxies and quantitatively calculate the spectral energy distribution of all PWNe in the SBG NGC 253 and M82. We propose that TeV $γ$-ray emission in starburst galaxies can be dominated by PWNe for a wide range of parameter space. The energetic argument requires that $η_e \times v_{\rm SN} > 0.01 {\rm yr}^{-1}$, where $η_e$ is the fraction the spin-down energy going to electrons and $v_{\rm SN}$ is the supernova rate. By requiring the synchrotron emission flux of all PWNe in the galaxy not exceeding the hard X-ray measurement of NGC 253, we constrain the initial magnetic field strength of PWNe to be $< 400 μ$G. Future observations at higher energies with LHAASO or next-generation neutrino observatory IceCube-Gen2 will help us to understand better the origin of the TeV $γ$-ray emission in SBGs.

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Constraining the jet composition of GRB 221009A with the prompt TeV emission limit

Recent LHAASO observations of the prompt emission phase of the brightest-of-all-time GRB 221009A imposes a stringent limit on the flux ratio between the TeV and MeV emissions, $F_{\rm TeV}/F_{\rm MeV}\le 2\times10^{-5}$, during the period $220 \operatorname{-}230\, {\rm s}$ after the trigger. bf This period covers the peak of the main MeV burst and is just before the TeV afterglow emerges. Within the framework of internal shocks, we study the internal $γγ$ absorption in GRB 221009A by generating a set of synthetic bursts in a simulation that reproduces the observed feature of GRB 221009A. We find that the $γγ$ absorption does not lead to an exponential cutoff, but rather a power-law spectrum, consistent with previous works. We further find that the attenuation due to $γγ$ absorption alone cannot explain the flux limit ratio of GRB 221009A, suggesting a low ratio between synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) and synchrotron emission outputs. This requires the magnetic field energy density to be much larger than the synchrotron photon energy density so that the SSC flux is greatly suppressed. This indicates that the jet composition of GRB 221009A is likely Poynting-flux-dominated.

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Fermi-LAT Detection of a GeV Afterglow from a Compact Stellar Merger

It is usually thought that long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are associated with massive star core collapse, whereas short-duration GRBs are associated with mergers of compact stellar binaries. The discovery of a kilonova associated with a nearby (350 Mpc) long-duration GRB-GRB 211211A, however, indicates that the progenitor of this long-duration GRB is a compact object merger. Here we report the Fermi-LAT detection of gamma-ray ($>100 {\rm \ MeV}$) afterglow emission from GRB 211211A, which lasts $\sim$20,000 s after the burst, the longest event for conventional short-duration GRBs ever detected. We suggest that this gamma-ray emission results from afterglow synchrotron emission. The soft spectrum of GeV emission may arise from a limited maximum synchrotron energy of only a few hundreds of MeV at $\sim$20,000 s. The unusually long duration of the GeV emission could be due to the proximity of this GRB and the long deceleration time of the GRB jet that is expanding in a low-density circumburst medium, consistent with the compact stellar merger scenario.

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Constraints on the intergalactic magnetic field strength from $γ$-ray observations of GRB 221009A

Characteristics of the cascade gamma-ray signal resulting from very-high-energy gamma-ray sources, such as gamma-ray bursts, can be used to constrain the strength and structure of intergalactic magnetic fields (IGMF). There has been a debate on whether GRB 190114C, the first gamma-ray burst with observed TeV photons, can constrain the IGMF. Recently, LHAASO detected the brightest-of-all-time GRB 221009A, which has much larger energy in TeV band and the spectrum extends to energy above 10 TeV, providing an unprecedented opportunity to studying IGMF. We perform a Monte-Carlo simulation of the cascade process with the public ELMAG code, considering the TeV data of GRB 221009A observed by LHAASO. By comparing the resulting cascade emission with the flux limit obtained from Fermi-LAT observations, we infer a limit of $B\ge 10^{-18.5}\rm G$ for IGMF. Though this limit may not be as strong as the limit from blazars, it serves as an independent constraint on IGMF from a new class of TeV sources.

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GRB 221009A: revealing a hidden afterglow during the prompt emission phase with Fermi-GBM observations

Recently, LHAASO reported the detection of brightest-of-all-time GRB 221009A, revealing the early onset of a TeV afterglow. However, there is no evidence of afterglow emission at such early time at other wavelengths. Here we report the discovery of a hidden afterglow component during the prompt emission phase with Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) observations. We analyze the spectral evolution of the X-ray/$γ$-ray emission of GRB 221009A measured by GBM during the dips of two prompt emission pulses (i.e., intervals $T_{0}+[300-328]\rm~s$ and $T_{0}+[338-378]\rm~s$, where $T_0$ is the GBM trigger time). We find that the spectra at the dips transit from the Band function to a power-law function, indicating a transition from the prompt emission to the afterglow. After $\sim T_{0}+ 660 \rm~s$, the spectrum is well described by a power-law function and the afterglow becomes dominant. Remarkably, the underlying afterglow emission at the dips smoothly connect with the afterglow after $\sim T_{0}+ 660 \rm~s$. The entire afterglow emission measured by GBM can be fitted by a power-law function $F\sim t^{-0.95\pm0.05}$, where $t$ is the time since the first main pulse at $T^*=T_0+226~{\rm s}$, consistent with the TeV afterglow decay measured by LHAASO. The start time of this power-law decay indicates that the afterglow peak of GRB 221009A should be earlier than $T_{0}+300 \rm ~s$. We also test the possible presence of a jet break in the early afterglow light curve, finding that both the jet break model and single power-law decay model are consistent with the GBM data. The two models can not be distinguished with the GBM data alone because the inferred jet break time is quite close to the end of GBM observations.

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Constraining baryon loading efficiency of AGNs with diffuse neutrino flux from galaxy clusters

The active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are widely believed to be one of the promising acceleration sites of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (CRs). Essentially, AGNs are powered by the gravitational energy of matter falling to supermassive black holes. However, the conversion efficiency of gravitational to kinetic energy of CRs in AGNs, which is defined as baryon loading factor $η_p$, is not well known yet. After being accelerated, high-energy CRs could escape the host galaxy and enter the intra-cluster medium (ICM). These CRs can be confined within the galaxy cluster and produce $γ$-rays and neutrinos through proton-proton collisions with the ICM. In this paper, we study the diffusion of CRs in galaxy clusters and calculate the diffuse neutrino flux from galaxy cluster population. Using the latest upper limits on the cumulative unresolved TeV-PeV neutrino flux from galaxy clusters posed by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, we derive the upper limit of the average baryon loading factor as $η_{p,\mathrm{grav}} \lesssim 2 \times 10^{-3} - 0.1$ for the population of galaxy clusters. This constraint is more stringent than the one obtained from $γ$-ray observation on the Coma cluster.

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Choked jets in expanding envelope as the origin of the neutrino emission associated with Tidal Disruption Events

Three tidal disruption event (TDE) candidates (AT2019dsg, AT2019fdr, AT2019aalc) have been found to be coincident with high-energy astrophysical neutrinos in multi-messenger follow-ups. Recent studies suggest the presence of a quasi-spherical, optically thick envelope around the supermassive black holes in TDEs, resulted from stellar debris after the disruption. The envelope may expand outwardly with a velocity of $\sim 10^4\, {\rm km/s}$, as indicated by the emission line widths. We study whether the neutrino signal can be explained by choked relativistic jets inside the expanding envelope. While powerful jets, such as that in Swift J1644+57, can successfully break out from the envelope, those with relatively weak power could be choked by the envelope. Choked jets can still accelerate cosmic rays and produce high-energy neutrinos via interaction with the thermal photons in the envelope. We explore the parameter space of the jets that can produce detectable neutrino flux while being choked in the expanding envelope. We find that the cumulative neutrino numbers of AT2019fdr and AT2019aalc are consistent with the expected range imposed by observations, while the allowed parameter space for AT2019dsg is small.The neutrino time delay relative to the optical peak time of TDEs can be explained as the jet propagation time in the envelope before being choked. The discovery of TDE-associated neutrino events may suggest that jets might have been commonly formed in TDEs, as expected from super-Eddington accretion, but most of them are too weak to break out from the expanding envelopes.

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Prompt-to-afterglow transition of optical emission in a long gamma-ray burst consistent with a fireball

Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which signify the end-life collapsing of very massive stars, are produced by extremely relativistic jets colliding into circumstellar medium. Huge energy is released both in the first few seconds, namely the internal dissipation phase that powers prompt emissions, and in the subsequent self-similar jet-deceleration phase that produces afterglows observed in broad-band electromagnetic spectrum. However, prompt optical emissions of GRBs have been rarely detected, seriously limiting our understanding of the transition between the two phases. Here we report detection of prompt optical emissions from a gamma-ray burst (i.e. GRB 201223A) using a dedicated telescope array with a high temporal resolution and a wide time coverage. The early phase coincident with prompt γ-ray emissions show a luminosity in great excess with respect to the extrapolation of γ-rays, while the later luminosity bump is consistent with onset of the afterglow. The clearly detected transition allows us to differentiate physical processes contributing to early optical emissions and to diagnose the composition of the jet

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A huge-amplitude white-light superflare on a L0 brown dwarf discovered by GWAC survey

White-light superflares from ultra cool stars are thought to be resulted from magnetic reconnection, but the magnetic dynamics in a fully convective star is not clear yet. In this paper, we report a stellar superflare detected with the Ground Wide Angle Camera (GWAC), along with rapid follow-ups with the F60A, Xinglong 2.16m and LCOGT telescopes. The effective temperature of the counterpart is estimated to be $2200\pm50$K by the BT-Settl model, corresponding to a spectral type of L0. The $R-$band light curve can be modeled as a sum of three exponential decay components, where the impulsive component contributes a fraction of 23\% of the total energy, while the gradual and the shallower decay phases emit 42\% and 35\% of the total energy, respectively. The strong and variable Balmer narrow emission lines indicate the large amplitude flare is resulted from magnetic activity. The bolometric energy released is about $6.4\times10^{33}$ ergs, equivalent to an energy release in a duration of 143.7 hours at its quiescent level. The amplitude of $ΔR=-8.6 $mag ( or $ΔV=-11.2$ mag), placing it one of the highest amplitudes of any ultra cool star recorded with excellent temporal resolution. We argue that a stellar flare with such rapidly decaying and huge amplitude at distances greater than 1 kpc may be false positive in searching for counterparts of catastrophic events such as gravitational wave events or gamma-ray bursts, which are valuable in time-domain astronomy and should be given more attention.

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Jet-cloud/star interaction as an interpretation of neutrino outburst from the blazar TXS 0506+056

A neutrino outburst between September 2014 and March 2015 was discovered from the blazar TXS 0506+056 by an investigation of $9.5$ years of IceCube data, while the blazar was in a quiescent state during the outburst with a gamma-ray flux only about one-fifth of the neutrino flux. In this work, we give a possible interpretation of the abnormal feature by proposing that the neutrino outburst originates from the interaction between a relativistic jet and a dense gas cloud formed via the tidally disrupted envelope of a red giant being blown apart by the impact of the jet. Gamma-ray photons and electron/positron pairs that are produced through the hadronuclear interactions correspondingly will induce electromagnetic cascades and then make the cloud ionized and thermalized. The EM radiation from jet-cloud/star interaction is mainly contributed by the relatively low-energy relativistic protons which propagate in the diffusion regime inside the cloud due to magnetic deflections, whereas the observed high-energy neutrinos ($\gtrsim 100\,\rm TeV$) are produced by the relatively high-energy protons which can keep beamed owing to the weak magnetic deflections, inducing a much higher flux of neutrinos than electromagnetic radiation. The observed low-energy electromagnetic radiations during the neutrino outburst period are almost as same as that in the quiescent state of the source, so it may mainly arise as same as the general quiescent state. As a result, due to the intrusion of a dense cloud, the neutrino outburst can be expected, and in the meantime, the accompanying electromagnetic radiations from hadronic processes will not cause any enhancement in the blazar's electromagnetic flux.

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Constraints on the Model of Gamma-ray Bursts and Implications from GRB 221009A: GeV gamma rays v.s. High-energy Neutrinos

Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are generally believed to be efficient particle accelerators. In the presence of energetic protons in a GRB jet, interactions between these protons and intense radiation field of the GRB are supposed to induce electromagnetic cascade. Electrons/positrons generated in the cascade will produce an additional spectrum of robust feature, which is in the form of a power-law distribution up to GeV regime with an index of $\lesssim 2$. We suggest that measurements of Fermi-LAT at GeV band can provide independent constraints on the key GRB model parameters such as the dissipation radius, the jet's bulk Lorentz factor, and the baryon loading factor. Taking GRB 221009A, the brightest GRB ever detected, as an example, we show that the constraints from GeV gamma-ray emission may be more stringent than that from the neutrino observation, providing us a deep insight into the origin of GRBs.

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Magnetic activities and parameters of 43 flare stars in the GWAC archive

In the archive of the Ground Wide Angle Camera (GWAC), we found 43 white light flares from 43 stars, among which, three are sympathetic or homologous flares, and one of them also has a quasi-periodic pulsation with a period of $13.0\pm1.5$ minutes. Among these 43 flare stars, there are 19 new active stars and 41 stars that have available TESS and/or K2 light curves, from which we found 931 stellar flares. We also obtained rotational or orbital periods of 34 GWAC flare stars, of which 33 are less than 5.4 days, and ephemerides of three eclipsing binaries from these light curves. Combining with low resolution spectra from LAMOST and the Xinglong 2.16m telescope, we found that $L_{\rm Hα}/L_{\rm bol}$ are in the saturation region in the rotation-activity diagram. From the LAMOST medium-resolution spectrum, we found that Star \#3 (HAT 178-02667) has double H$α$ emissions which imply it is a binary, and two components are both active stars. Thirteen stars have flare frequency distributions (FFDs) from TESS and/or K2 light curves. These FFDs show that the flares detected by GWAC can occur at a frequency of 0.5 to 9.5 yr$^{-1}$. The impact of flares on habitable planets was also studied based on these FFDs, and flares from some GWAC flare stars may produce enough energetic flares to destroy ozone layers, but none can trigger prebiotic chemistry on their habitable planets.

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