Logo image
Back
Measurement of cosmic-ray electrons at TeV energies by VERITAS
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Measurement of cosmic-ray electrons at TeV energies by VERITAS

A. Archer, W. Benbow, R. Bird, R. Brose, M. Buchovecky, J. H. Buckley, V. Bugaev, M. P. Connolly, W. Cui, M. K. Daniel, …
Physical review. D, v 98(6), p062004
20 Sep 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.98.062004
url
https://link.aps.org/accepted/10.1103/PhysRevD.98.062004View
Accepted (AM)Open Access (Publisher-Specific),  Open
url
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.98.062004View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Astronomy & Astrophysics Physical Sciences Physics Physics, Particles & Fields Science & Technology
Cosmic-ray electrons and positrons (CREs) at GeV-TeV energies are a unique probe of our local Galactic neighborhood. CREs lose energy rapidly via synchrotron radiation and inverse-Compton scattering processes while propagating within the Galaxy, and these losses limit their propagation distance. For electrons with TeV energies, the limit is on the order of a kiloparsec. Within that distance, there are only a few known astrophysical objects capable of accelerating electrons to such high energies. It is also possible that the CREs are the products of the annihilation or decay of heavy dark matter (DM) particles. VERITAS, an array of imaging air Cherenkov telescopes in southern Arizona, is primarily utilized for gamma-ray astronomy but also simultaneously collects CREs during all observations. We describe our methods of identifying CREs in VERITAS data and present an energy spectrum, extending from 300 GeV to 5 TeV, obtained from approximately 300 hours of observations. A single power-law fit is ruled out in VERITAS data. We find that the spectrum of CREs is consistent with a broken power law, with a break energy at 710 +/- 40(stat) +/- 140(syst) GeV.

Metrics

8 Record Views
39 citations in Web of Science
50 citations in Scopus

Details

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Physics, Particles & Fields
Logo image