Pith. sign in

REVIEW 19 cited by

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

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

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

A.U. Abeysekara (1) , A. Albert (2) , R. Alfaro (3) , C. Alvarez (4) , J.D. Álvarez (5) , R. Arceo (4) , J.C. Arteaga-Velázquez (5) , D. Avila Rojas (3)
show 202 more authors
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. Capistrán (12) A. Carramiñana (12) S. Casanova (13 14) M.Castillo (5) U. Cotti (5) J. Cotzomi (15) S. Coutiño de León (12) C. De León (15) E. De la Fuente (16) B.L. Dingus (2) M.A. DuVernois (11) J.C. Díaz-Vélez (16) R.W. Ellsworth (17) K. Engel (9) O. Enríquez-Rivera (18) D.W. Fiorino (9) N. Fraija (10) J.A. García-González (3) F. Garfias (10) M. Gerhardt (6) A. González Muñoz (3) M.M. González (10) J.A. Goodman (9) Z. Hampel-Arias (11) J.P. Harding (2) S. Hernández (3) A. Hernández-Almada (3) J. Hinton (14) B. Hona (6) C.M. Hui (19) P. Hüntemeyer (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. León Vargas (3) J.T. Linnemann (22) A.L. Longinotti (12) G. Luis Raya (7) R. Luna-García (23) R. López-Coto (14) K. Malone (24) S.S. Marinelli (22) O. Martinez (15) I. Martinez-Castellanos (9) J. Martínez-Castro (23) H. Martínez-Huerta (25) J.A. Matthews (20) P. Miranda-Romagnoli (26) E. Moreno (15) M. Mostafá (24) L. Nellen (27) M. Newbold (1) M.U. Nisa (8) R. Noriega-Papaqui (26) R. Pelayo (23) J. Pretz (24) E.G. Pérez-Pérez (7) Z. Ren (20) C.D. Rho (8) C. Rivière (9) D. Rosa-González (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 Física Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Mexico City Mexico (4) Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas Tuxtla Gutiérrez Chiapas (5) Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás 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 Astronomía (11) Department of Physics University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison WI (12) Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica Óptica y Electrónica 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 Físico Matemáticas Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (16) Departamento de Física Centro Universitario de Ciencias Exactas e Ingenierías Universidad de Guadalajara Guadalajara (17) School of Physics Computational Sciences George Mason University Fairfax VA (18) Instituto de Geofísica (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 Investigación en Computación Instituto Politécnico 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 Autónoma 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)
This is my paper · ORCID
classification astro-ph.HE
keywords sourcesoriginpulsarsdemonstrateearthemissionextendedflux
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
0 comments
read the original abstract

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.

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 19 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. A Boundary-Consistent Two-Zone Electron Kernel for Distant Pulsar Contributions to Positron Flux and Anisotropy

    astro-ph.HE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    A boundary-consistent two-zone kernel shows that distant pulsars beyond 1 kpc can contribute 37-47% of the 10-100 GeV positron flux for a 0.2 kpc disk thickness, with Geminga-like halos compatible with AMS-02 data whe...

  2. A catalogue of TeV pulsar environments

    astro-ph.HE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    A homogenized catalogue of 128 TeV sources linked to 66 pulsars shows weak correlation between TeV luminosity and pulsar age, indicating environmental effects dominate evolution.

  3. Charge-dependent spectral softenings of primary cosmic-rays below the knee

    astro-ph.HE 2025-11 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Direct measurements reveal charge-dependent spectral softenings in primary cosmic rays at a common rigidity of ~15 TV, rejecting mass-dependent softening at >99.999% confidence.

  4. On the Contribution of Local Sources to the Galactic Cosmic-Ray Spectrum: An Exact Series Solution for Two-Zone Diffusion

    astro-ph.HE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    Derives series solution for two-zone cosmic-ray diffusion and finds local-source probability at 10 TeV rises from 0.4% to 1.7-2.2% but remains model-dependent.

  5. Self-confinement of relativistic pair beams in magnetized interstellar plasmas: the case of pulsar X-ray filaments

    astro-ph.HE 2025-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A charge-neutral pair beam can spontaneously develop a net current via the cavitation instability, and that current drives the Bell instability to amplify the magnetic field.

  6. PHECT: A lightweight computation tool for pulsar halo emission

    astro-ph.HE 2025-08 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    PHECT is a configurable computation tool for pulsar halo gamma-ray emission using multiple transport models and stable finite-volume discretizations.

  7. Detecting dark matter sub-halos in the Galactic plane with the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory

    astro-ph.HE 2025-01 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    CTAO's Galactic Plane Survey could detect the brightest Milky Way dark matter sub-halo at 5-sigma for TeV-scale WIMPs annihilating to b-quarks with cross section about 3e-25 cm^3/s, roughly ten times the canonical the...

  8. SECRET: Stochasticity Emulator for Cosmic Ray Electrons

    astro-ph.HE 2025-01 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    SECRET, a MADE-based conditional density emulator, reproduces and interpolates the joint distribution of stochastic cosmic-ray electron spectra across five transport parameters with few-percent quantile accuracy over ...

  9. Spectral energy-loss bump and $\gamma$-ray pulsar halos

    astro-ph.HE 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    The curved spectrum of the young pulsar halo LHAASO J0248+6021 is explained by a time-dependent energy-loss bump in the electron spectrum that remains close to the cutoff, unifying it with the shifted bump observed in...

  10. Implication of multiple source populations of Galactic cosmic rays from proton and helium spectra

    astro-ph.HE 2025-11 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    The proton and helium spectra from 1 GeV to 10 PeV can be reproduced only by adding two local sources or a second background population on top of the standard cosmic-ray background.

  11. Discrete treatment of inverse Compton scattering: implications on parameter estimation in gamma-ray astronomy

    astro-ph.HE 2025-03 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    Discrete ICS simulation shows continuous approximations overestimate evolved cutoff energies, leading to lower inferred electron injection cutoffs for Geminga at 95% CL and potential overestimation of acceleration in ...

  12. Constraining the slow-diffusion zone size and electron injection spectral index for the Geminga pulsar halo

    astro-ph.HE 2023-10 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    A two-zone diffusion model fitted to HAWC morphology and spectrum data constrains Geminga's slow-diffusion zone to 30-70 pc and injection index p ≤ 2.17, reproducing AMS-02 positrons as a derived outcome.

  13. Geminga and Monogem in the CTAO Era: Probing TeV Halos and Cosmic-Ray Transport

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 accept novelty 4.0 of 10

    End-to-end CTAO simulations show that 50h observations will detect Geminga and Monogem TeV halos at 13–30σ and constrain injection index to Δγ₁≈0.2, magnetic field to ΔB≈2μG, and SDZ size for Monogem.

  14. Diffuse gamma-ray emission in the vicinity of open cluster Berkeley 87

    astro-ph.HE 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 4.0 of 10

    Diffuse gamma-ray emission detected toward Berkeley 87 with 0.36° extension and photon index 2.68, favoring a hadronic origin due to dense gas and stellar winds.

  15. Resolving diffusion signatures in distant pulsar halos with current and future experiments

    astro-ph.HE 2026-03 unverdicted novelty 4.0 of 10

    Simulations indicate that CTA's angular resolution and LHAASO-KM2A's large area will improve morphological separation of diffusion-based pulsar halos from simpler spatial models.

  16. The Southern Wide-Field Gamma-Ray Observatory (SWGO): A Next-Generation Ground-Based Survey Instrument for VHE Gamma-Ray Astronomy

    astro-ph.IM 2019-07 unverdicted novelty 4.0 of 10

    SWGO is proposed as a wide-field VHE gamma-ray survey instrument with a compact inner detector array and sparser outer array, estimated at 54M USD construction cost and full operations by 2026.

  17. TeV-PeV Gamma-ray and Neutrino Emission in the Galactic Plane

    astro-ph.HE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 3.0 of 10

    Alternative ISRF models produce only modest changes to the LHAASO diffuse gamma-ray fit; the associated pp neutrinos remain consistent with IceCube all-sky data and compatible with ANTARES/KM3NeT limits.

  18. Understanding Pulsar Wind Nebulae with the SKA

    astro-ph.HE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 2.0 of 10

    SKA will enable spatially resolved radio studies of pulsar wind nebulae to probe particle acceleration and propagation in ultra-relativistic outflows.

  19. Small-scale Magnetic Fields in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies

    astro-ph.GA 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 1.0 of 10

    Review chapter summarizing the importance of small-scale galactic magnetic fields and proposing SKA observation strategies.

Pith tools