High-energy gamma-ray production in microquasars

CHRISTIANSEN, H.R.; ROMERO, G.E.; ORELLANA, M.

Porto Alegre, Brasil

Workshop; I Latin American Workshop on High Energy Phenomenology; 2005

Physics Institute of the Federal University of the Rio Grande do Sul

A hadronic model for gamma-ray production in microquasars is presented. Microquasars are galactic binary systems with jets, which have, presumably, hadronic components. We consider a microquasar formed by a neutron star that accretes matter from the equatorial wind of a Be primary star. The collision between thejet, emitted by the compact object, and the dense equatorial disk of the companion massive star is responsible for the gamma-ray production. Gamma-rays result from the decay of neutral pions produced in relativistic pp interactions arising from this collision all along the orbit. Assuming a simple, positional independent setof parameters, our calculations are consistent with a peak of gamma-ray flux at the periastron passage with a secondary maximum near apastron. Under this assumption, gamma-ray signals would be in contrast with the radio/X-ray outbursts which peak clearly after periastron. We finally calculate the opacity of the ambient photon field to the propagation of the gamma-rays. The spectral energy distribution appears strongly attenuated in a wide band (50 GeV - 50 TeV) due to local absorption. These spectral features should be detectable by an instrument like MAGIC through exposures integrated along several periastron passages.