Asset Details
Do you wish to reserve the book?
Non-thermal X-rays from colliding wind shock acceleration in the massive binary Eta Carinae
Hey, we have placed the reservation for you!
By the way, why not check out events that you can attend while you pick your title.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place the reservation. Kindly try again later.
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
Non-thermal X-rays from colliding wind shock acceleration in the massive binary Eta Carinae
Do you wish to request the book?
Non-thermal X-rays from colliding wind shock acceleration in the massive binary Eta Carinae
Please be aware that the book you have requested cannot be checked out. If you would like to checkout this book, you can reserve another copy
We have requested the book for you!
Your request is successful and it will be processed during the Library working hours. Please check the status of your request in My Requests.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place your request. Kindly try again later.
Journal Article
Non-thermal X-rays from colliding wind shock acceleration in the massive binary Eta Carinae
2018
Overview
Cosmic-ray acceleration has been a long-standing mystery
1
,
2
and, despite more than a century of study, we still do not have a complete census of acceleration mechanisms. The collision of strong stellar winds in massive binary systems creates powerful shocks that have been expected to produce high-energy cosmic rays through Fermi acceleration at the shock interface. The accelerated particles should collide with stellar photons or ambient material, producing non-thermal emission observable in X-rays and γ-rays
3
,
4
. The supermassive binary star Eta Carinae (η Car) drives the strongest colliding wind shock in the solar neighbourhood
5
,
6
. Observations with non-focusing high-energy observatories indicate a high-energy source near η Car, but have been unable to conclusively identify η Car as the source because of their relatively poor angular resolution
7
–
9
. Here we present direct focussing observations of the non-thermal source in the extremely hard X-ray band, which is found to be spatially coincident with the star within several arc-seconds. These observations show that the source of non-thermal X-rays varies with the orbital phase of the binary, and that the photon index of the emission is similar to that derived through analysis of the γ-ray spectrum. This is conclusive evidence that the high-energy emission indeed originates from non-thermal particles accelerated at colliding wind shocks.
Massive binary star Eta Carinae drives the strongest colliding wind shock in the solar neighbourhood. Using NuSTAR and XMM-Newton data, Eta Car has now been convincingly shown to accelerate non-thermal particles, contributing to the Galactic cosmic ray flux.
