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Extended gamma-ray sources around pulsars constrain the origin of the positron flux at Earth

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arxiv 1711.06223 v1 pith:RSCBJJFT submitted 2017-11-16 astro-ph.HE

Extended gamma-ray sources around pulsars constrain the origin of the positron flux at Earth

A.U. Abeysekara (1) , A. Albert (2) , R. Alfaro (3) , C. Alvarez (4) , J.D. \'Alvarez (5) , R. Arceo (4) , J.C. Arteaga-Vel\'azquez (5) , D. Avila Rojas (3)
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H.A. Ayala Solares (6) A.S. Barber (1) N. Bautista-Elivar (7) A. Becerril (3) E. Belmont-Moreno (3) S.Y. BenZvi (8) D. Berley (9) A. Bernal (10) J. Braun (11) C. Brisbois (6) K.S. Caballero-Mora (4) T. Capistr\'an (12) A. Carrami\~nana (12) S. Casanova (13 14) M.Castillo (5) U. Cotti (5) J. Cotzomi (15) S. Couti\~no de Le\'on (12) C. De Le\'on (15) E. De la Fuente (16) B.L. Dingus (2) M.A. DuVernois (11) J.C. D\'iaz-V\'elez (16) R.W. Ellsworth (17) K. Engel (9) O. Enr\'iquez-Rivera (18) D.W. Fiorino (9) N. Fraija (10) J.A. Garc\'ia-Gonz\'alez (3) F. Garfias (10) M. Gerhardt (6) A. Gonz\'alez Mu\~noz (3) M.M. Gonz\'alez (10) J.A. Goodman (9) Z. Hampel-Arias (11) J.P. Harding (2) S. Hern\'andez (3) A. Hern\'andez-Almada (3) J. Hinton (14) B. Hona (6) C.M. Hui (19) P. H\"untemeyer (6) A. Iriarte (10) A. Jardin-Blicq (14) V. Joshi (14) S. Kaufmann (4) D. Kieda (1) A. Lara (18) R.J. Lauer (20) W.H. Lee (10) D. Lennarz (21) H. Le\'on Vargas (3) J.T. Linnemann (22) A.L. Longinotti (12) G. Luis Raya (7) R. Luna-Garc\'ia (23) R. L\'opez-Coto (14) K. Malone (24) S.S. Marinelli (22) O. Martinez (15) I. Martinez-Castellanos (9) J. Mart\'inez-Castro (23) H. Mart\'inez-Huerta (25) J.A. Matthews (20) P. Miranda-Romagnoli (26) E. Moreno (15) M. Mostaf\'a (24) L. Nellen (27) M. Newbold (1) M.U. Nisa (8) R. Noriega-Papaqui (26) R. Pelayo (23) J. Pretz (24) E.G. P\'erez-P\'erez (7) Z. Ren (20) C.D. Rho (8) C. Rivi\`ere (9) D. Rosa-Gonz\'alez (12) M. Rosenberg (24) E. Ruiz-Velasco (3) H. Salazar (15) F. Salesa Greus (13) A. Sandoval (3) M. Schneider (28) H. Schoorlemmer (14) G. Sinnis (2) A.J. Smith (9) R.W. Springer (1) P. Surajbali (14) I. Taboada (21) O. Tibolla (4) K. Tollefson (22) I. Torres (12) T.N. Ukwatta (2) G. Vianello (29) T. Weisgarber (11) S. Westerhoff (11) I. G. Wisher (11) J. Wood (11) T. Yapici (22) G. Yodh (30) P.W. Younk (2) A. Zepeda (25 4) H. Zhou (2) F. Guo (2) J. Hahn (14) H. Li (2) H. Zhang (2) ((1) Department of Physics Astronomy University of Utah Salt Lake City UT USA (2) Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos NM (3) Instituto de F\'isica Universidad Nacional Aut\'onoma de M\'exico Mexico City Mexico (4) Universidad Aut\'onoma de Chiapas Tuxtla Guti\'errez Chiapas (5) Universidad Michoacana de San Nicol\'as de Hidalgo Morelia (6) Department of Physics Michigan Technological University Houghton MI (7) Universidad Politecnica de Pachuca Pachuca Hidalgo (8) Department of Physics University of Rochester Rochester NY (9) Department of Physics University of Maryland College Park MD (10) Instituto de Astronom\'ia (11) Department of Physics University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison WI (12) Instituto Nacional de Astrof\'isica \'Optica y Electr\'onica Puebla (13) Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences Krakow Poland (14) Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics Heidelberg Germany (15) Facultad de Ciencias F\'isico Matem\'aticas Benem\'erita Universidad Aut\'onoma de Puebla (16) Departamento de F\'isica Centro Universitario de Ciencias Exactas e Ingenier\'ias Universidad de Guadalajara Guadalajara (17) School of Physics Computational Sciences George Mason University Fairfax VA (18) Instituto de Geof\'isica (19) Astrophysics Office NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville AL (20) Department of Physics University of New Mexico Albuquerque (21) School of Physics Center for Relativistic Astrophysics - Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta GA (22) Department of Physics Michigan State University East Lansing (23) Centro de Investigaci\'on en Computaci\'on Instituto Polit\'ecnico Nacional Mexico. (24) Department of Physics Pennsylvania State University University Park PA (25) Physics Department Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN (26) Universidad Aut\'onoma del Estado de Hidalgo (27) Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares (28) Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics University of California Santa Cruz CA (29) Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory Stanford University Stanford (30) Department of Physics Irvine USA)
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keywords sourcesoriginpulsarsdemonstrateearthemissionextendedflux
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The unexpectedly high flux of cosmic ray positrons detected at Earth may originate from nearby astrophysical sources, dark matter, or unknown processes of cosmic-ray secondary production. We report the detection, using the HighAltitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC), of extended tera-electron volt gamma-ray emission coincident with the locations of two nearby middle-aged pulsars (Geminga and PSR B0656+14). The HAWC observations demonstrate that these pulsars are indeed local sources of accelerated leptons, but the measured tera-electron volt emission profile constrains the diffusion of particles away from these sources to be much slower than previously assumed. We demonstrate that the leptons emitted by these objects are therefore unlikely to be the origin of the excess positrons, which may have a more exotic origin.

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Forward citations

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