MAGIC very large zenith angle observations of the Crab Nebula up to 100 TeV

Aims. We measure the Crab Nebula gamma-ray spectral energy distribution in the 100 TeV energy domain and test the validity of existing leptonic emission models at these high energies.Methods. We used the novel very large zenith angle observations with the MAGIC telescope system to increase the colle...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Barrio Uña, Juan Abel, Contreras González, José Luis, Fidalgo, David Friedrich Carreto, Fonseca González, María Victoria, Hoang, Kim Dinh, López Moya, Marcos, Peñil Del Campo, Pablo, Saha, Lab
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/6232
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/6232
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:539.1
Major upgrade
Gamma-rays
Pulsar
Energy
Performance
Telescopes
Spectrum
System
Física nuclear
2207 Física Atómica y Nuclear
Descripción
Sumario:Aims. We measure the Crab Nebula gamma-ray spectral energy distribution in the 100 TeV energy domain and test the validity of existing leptonic emission models at these high energies.Methods. We used the novel very large zenith angle observations with the MAGIC telescope system to increase the collection area above 10 TeV. We also developed an auxiliary procedure of monitoring atmospheric transmission in order to assure proper calibration of the accumulated data. This employs recording optical images of the stellar field next to the source position, which provides a better than 10% accuracy for the transmission measurements.Results. We demonstrate that MAGIC very large zenith angle observations yield a collection area larger than a square kilometer. In only 56 h of observations, we detect the gamma-ray emission from the Crab Nebula up to 100 TeV, thus providing the highest energy measurement of this source to date with Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. Comparing accumulated and archival MAGIC and Fermi/LAT data with some of the existing emission models, we find that none of them provides an accurate description of the 1 GeV to 100 TeV gamma-ray signal.