Discovery of Molecular and Atomic Clouds Associated with the Gamma-Ray Supernova Remnant Kesteven 79

We carried out $^{12}$CO($J$ = 1-0) observations of the Galactic gamma-ray supernova remnant (SNR) Kesteven 79 using the Nobeyama Radio Observatory 45 m radio telescope, which has an angular resolution of $\sim20$ arcsec. We identified molecular and atomic gas interacting with Kesteven 79 whose radial velocity is $\sim80$ km s$^{-1}$. The interacting molecular and atomic gases show good spatial correspondence with the X-ray and radio shells, which have an expanding velocity structure with $\Delta V\sim4$ km s$^{-1}$. The molecular gas associated with the radio and X-ray peaks also exhibits a high-intensity ratio of CO 3-2/1-0 $>$ 0.8, suggesting a kinematic temperature of $\sim100$ K, owing to heating by the supernova shock. We determined the kinematic distance to the SNR to be $\sim5.5$ kpc and the radius of the SNR to be $\sim8$ pc. The average interstellar proton density inside of the SNR is $\sim360$ cm$^{-3}$, of which atomic protons comprise only $\sim10$ $\%$. Assuming a hadronic origin for the gamma-ray emission, the total cosmic-ray proton energy above 1 GeV is estimated to be $\sim5 \times 10^{48}$ erg.