Gamma-ray emission from massive star forming regions

TL;DR

This paper investigates gamma-ray emission from massive star-forming regions, focusing on particle acceleration by shocks from stellar outflows and their potential detectability with future gamma-ray observatories.

Contribution

It models high-energy processes in star-forming regions, highlighting the potential gamma-ray signals from relativistic particles accelerated by stellar outflows.

Findings

Relativistic electrons produce gamma-rays via Bremsstrahlung, synchrotron, and inverse Compton processes.

Protons mainly cool through inelastic collisions, contributing to gamma-ray emission.

Some massive young stellar objects could be detectable at gamma-ray energies with upcoming instruments.

Abstract

Recent radio observations support a picture for star formation where there is accretion of matter onto a central protostar with the ejection of molecular outflows that can affect the surrounding medium. The impact of a supersonic outflow on the ambient gas can produce a strong shock that could accelerate particles up to relativistic energies. A strong evidence of this has been the detection of non-thermal radio emission coming from the jet termination region of some young massive stars. In the present contribution, we study the possible high-energy emission due to the interaction of relativistic particles, electrons and protons, with the magnetic, photon and matter fields inside a giant molecular cloud. Electrons lose energy via relativistic Bremsstrahlung, synchrotron radiation and inverse Compton interactions, and protons cool mainly through inelastic collisions with atoms in the cloud. We conclude that some massive young stellar objects might be detectable at gamma-rays by next generation instruments, both satellite-borne and ground based.