Exploring high-energy processes in binary systems with the Cherenkov Telescope Array

TL;DR

This paper discusses how the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will enhance understanding of high-energy processes in binary systems, including particle acceleration, emission mechanisms, and flow dynamics, through improved sensitivity and spectral analysis.

Contribution

It demonstrates CTA's capabilities to study flux, spectral variations, and correlated variability in binary systems, advancing high-energy astrophysics research.

Findings

CTA can detect flux and spectral changes in binary systems.

CTA will enable search for delays in X-ray/TeV variability.

Knowledge of high-energy physics in binaries will deepen with CTA.

Abstract

Several types of binary systems have been detected up to now at high and very high gamma-ray energies, including microquasars, young pulsars around massive stars and colliding wind binaries. The study of the sources already known, and of the new types of sources expected to be discovered with the unprecedented sensitivity of CTA, will allow us to qualitatively improve our knowledge on particle acceleration, emission and radiation reprocessing, and on the dynamics of flows and their magnetic fields. Here we present some examples of the capabilities of CTA to probe the flux and spectral changes that typically occur in these astrophysical sources, as well as to search for delays in correlated X-ray/TeV variability with CTA and satellites of the CTA era. Our results show that our knowledge of the high-energy physics in binary systems will significantly deepen with CTA.