Ultra-high energy Inverse Compton emission from Galactic electron accelerators.

2020 
It is generally held that > 100 TeV emission from astrophysical objects unambiguously demonstrates the presence of PeV protons/nuclei, due to the unavoidable Klein-Nishina suppression of inverse Compton emission from electrons. However, in the presence of inverse Compton dominated cooling, hard high-energy electron spectra are possible. We show that the environmental requirements for such spectra can naturally be met in spiral arms, and in particular in regions of enhanced star formation activity, the natural locations for the most promising accelerators: powerful young pulsars. Our scenario therefore provides a natural explanation for the 100 TeV sources recently reported by HAWC.
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