Gamma ray emission from embedded young massive star clusters unveiled by Fermi-LAT

TL;DR

This paper investigates gamma-ray emissions from young massive star clusters using Fermi-LAT data, exploring their potential role in accelerating cosmic rays up to PeV energies and assessing their contribution to Galactic cosmic rays.

Contribution

The study provides new gamma-ray observations of young massive star clusters and evaluates their significance as cosmic ray accelerators beyond supernova remnants.

Findings

Detection of gamma-ray emissions from several young star clusters.

Evidence supporting star clusters as potential PeV cosmic ray sources.

Discussion on future observational prospects with ASTRI and CTAO.

Abstract

Massive star clusters (SCs) have been proposed as additional contributors to Galactic Cosmic rays (CRs), to overcome the limitations of supernova remnants (SNR) to reach the highest energy end of the Galactic CR spectrum. Thanks to fast mass losses through collective stellar winds, the environment around SCs is potentially suitable for particle acceleration up to PeV energies. A handful of star clusters has been detected in gamma-rays confirming the idea that particle acceleration is taking place in these environments. Here we present a new analysis of Fermi-LAT data collected towards a few massive young star clusters and estimate the contribution of these types of sources to the bulk of CRs. We then briefly discuss the observational prospects for ASTRI and CTAO.