Discovery of two candidate pulsar wind nebulae in very-high-energy gamma rays

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of two new very-high-energy gamma-ray sources, likely pulsar wind nebulae, using the H.E.S.S. telescope array, demonstrating its effectiveness in such searches.

Contribution

First systematic search for VHE gamma-ray emission from pulsar wind nebulae in survey data, leading to the discovery of two new candidate nebulae.

Findings

Discovery of HESS J1718-385 and HESS J1809-193 as candidate pulsar wind nebulae.

H.E.S.S. is effective for extended VHE gamma-ray source searches.

Systematic survey approach yields new astrophysical objects.

Abstract

We present the discovery of two very-high-energy gamma-ray sources in an ongoing systematic search for emission above 100 GeV from pulsar wind nebulae in survey data from the H.E.S.S. telescope array. Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes are ideal tools for searching for extended emission from pulsar wind nebulae in the very-high-energy regime. H.E.S.S., with its large field of view of 5 degrees and high sensitivity, gives new prospects for the search for these objects. An ongoing systematic search for very-high-energy emission from energetic pulsars over the region of the Galactic plane between -60 degrees < l < 30 degrees, -2 degrees < b < 2 degrees is performed. For the resulting candidates, the standard H.E.S.S. analysis was applied and a search for multi-wavelength counterparts was performed. We present the discovery of two new candidate gamma-ray pulsar wind nebulae, HESS J1718-385 and HESS J1809-193. H.E.S.S. has proven to be a suitable instrument for pulsar wind nebula searches.