The supernova remnant W49B as seen with H.E.S.S. and Fermi-LAT

2018 
The supernova remnant (SNR) W49B originated from a core-collapse supernova that occurred between one and four thousand years ago, and subsequently evolved into a mixed-morphology remnant, which is interacting with molecular clouds (MC). γ-ray observations of SNR/MC associations are a powerful tool to constrain the origin of Galactic cosmic-rays, as they can probe the acceleration of hadrons through their interaction with the surrounding medium and subsequent emission of non-thermal photons. The detection of a γ-ray source coincident with W49B at very high energies (VHE; E > 100 GeV) with the H.E.S.S. Cherenkov telescopes is reported together with a study of the source with 5 years of Fermi-LAT high energy γ-ray (0.06 - 300 GeV) data. The smoothly-connected combined source spectrum, measured from 60 MeV to multi-TeV energies, shows two significant spectral breaks at 304±20 MeV and 8.4+2.2−2.5 GeV, the latter being constrained by the joint fit from the two instruments. The detected spectral features are similar to those observed in several other SNR/MC associations and are found to be indicative of γ-ray emission produced through neutral-pion decay.
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