Fermi LAT detection of the supernova remnant SN 1006 revisited: The southwest limb

Abstract

Abstract The data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have recently been updated. Thus we re-analyze the LAT data for the supernova remnant (SNR) SN 1006. Two parts of γ-ray emission from the region are clearly resolved, which correspond to the northeast (NE) and southwest (SW) limbs of the SNR. The former has been detected in the previous LAT data (Xing et al. 2016, ApJ, 823, 44), but the latter is newly detected in this work. The detections of the two limbs are at a ∼4σ significance level, and the spectral results for the NE limb are consistent with those obtained in previous detection analyses. We construct the broadband spectral energy distribution (SED) for the SW limb. Different scenarios are considered for its SED in γ-ray energies. We conclude that, very similarly in the case of the NE limb, the high-energy and very high-energy emissions from the SW limb is likely dominated by the leptonic process, in which high-energy electrons accelerated from the shell region of the SNR inverse-Compton scatter background photons to γ-rays.