Measurement of Very-high-energy Diffuse Gamma-ray Emissions from the Galactic Plane with LHAASO-WCDA

TL;DR

This study measures diffuse gamma-ray emission from the Galactic plane using LHAASO-WCDA, revealing spectral softening at around 30 TeV and higher fluxes than existing models, thus providing crucial data for understanding cosmic ray interactions.

Contribution

First detailed measurement of diffuse gamma-ray emission from 1 to 25 TeV across a wide Galactic region with LHAASO-WCDA, highlighting spectral features and deviations from gas density models.

Findings

Detection of diffuse emission with high significance in inner and outer Galactic planes.

Observation of spectral softening at ~30 TeV in the inner Galactic region.

Diffuse fluxes exceed model predictions based on local cosmic ray spectra.

Abstract

The diffuse Galactic gamma-ray emission is a very important tool used to study the propagation and interaction of cosmic rays in the Milky Way. In this work, we report the measurements of the diffuse emission from the Galactic plane, covering Galactic longitudes from $15^{\circ}$ to $235^{\circ}$ and latitudes from $-5^{\circ}$ to $+5^{\circ}$, in an energy range of 1 TeV to 25 TeV, with the Water Cherenkov Detector Array (WCDA) of the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO). After masking the sky regions of known sources, the diffuse emission is detected with $24.6\sigma$ and $9.1\sigma$ significance in the inner Galactic plane and outer Galactic plane, respectively. The WCDA spectra in both regions can be well described by a power-law function, with spectral indices of $-2.67\pm0.05_{\rm stat}$ in the inner region and $-2.83\pm0.19_{\rm stat}$ in the outer region, respectively. Combined with the Square Kilometer Array (KM2A) measurements at higher energies, a clear softening of the spectrum is found in the inner region, with change of spectral indices by $\sim0.5$ at a break energy around $30$ TeV. The fluxes of the diffuse emission are higher by a factor of $1.5-2.7$ than the model prediction assuming local CR spectra and the gas column density, which are consistent with those measured by the KM2A. Along Galactic longitude, the spatial distribution of the diffuse emission shows deviation from that of the gas column density. The spectral shape of the diffuse emission are possibly variation in different longitude region. The WCDA measurements bridge the gap between the low-energy measurements by space detectors and the ultra-high-energy observations by LHAASO-KM2A and other experiments. These results suggest that improved modeling of the wide-band diffuse emission is required.