High energy gamma-ray detection of supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud

TL;DR

This study analyzes 12 years of Fermi-LAT gamma-ray data to identify supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud, confirming known sources and discovering new gamma-ray emitting remnants likely due to hadronic processes.

Contribution

It applies clustering algorithms to gamma-ray data to detect supernova remnants and confirms the hadronic origin of high-energy photons in these sources.

Findings

Confirmed gamma-ray emission from known SNRs N 49B and N 63A.

Discovered new gamma-ray clusters associated with SNRs N 49, N 186D, and N 44.

Indicates hadronic interactions as the primary process for high-energy photon production.

Abstract

We present the results of a cluster search in the gamma-ray sky images of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) region by means of the Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) and DBSCAN algorithms, at energies higher than 6 and 10 GeV, using 12 years of Fermi-LAT data. Several significant clusters were found, the majority of which associated with previously known gamma-ray sources. We confirm our previous detection of the Supernova Remnants N 49B and N 63A and found new significant clusters associated with the SNRs N 49, N 186D and N 44. These sources are among the brightest X-ray remnants in the LMC and corresponds to core-collapse supernovae interacting with dense HII regions, indicating that an hadronic origin of high energy photons is the most likely process.