# Gamma-rays from massive protostars

## TL;DR

This paper explores how gamma-ray emissions from shocks in jets of massive protostars can be detected, providing insights into particle acceleration and star formation environments.

## Contribution

It estimates the conditions for gamma-ray emission from protostellar jets and suggests gamma-ray astronomy as a tool to study star-forming regions.

## Key findings

- Gamma-ray emissions are detectable from massive protostars in dense clouds.
- Particle interactions can produce observable gamma-ray signals in the MeV-GeV range.
- Gamma-ray observations can probe physical conditions in star-forming regions.

## Abstract

Massive protostars have associated bipolar outflows with velocities of hundreds of km/s. Such outflows produce strong shocks when interact with the ambient medium leading to regions of non-thermal radio emission. Under certain conditions, the population of relativistic particles accelerated at the terminal shocks of the protostellar jets can produce significant gamma-ray emission. We estimate the conditions necessary for high-energy emission in the non-thermal hot spots of jets associated with massive protostars embedded in dense molecular clouds. Our results show that particle-matter interactions can lead to the detection of molecular clouds hosting massive young stellar objects by the Fermi satellite at MeV-GeV energies and even by Cherenkov telescope arrays in the GeV-TeV range. Astronomy at gamma-rays can be used to probe the physical conditions in star forming regions and particle acceleration processes in the complex environment of massive molecular clouds.