Fermi detection of gamma-ray Emission from the Hot Coronae of Radio-quiet Active Galactic Nuclei

TL;DR

This study detects gamma-ray emission from the hot coronae of radio-quiet AGNs using Fermi-LAT data, revealing an extended corona region beyond current models and suggesting pair production as a possible mechanism.

Contribution

First detection of gamma-ray emission from the hot coronae of radio-quiet AGNs using stacking of Fermi-LAT data, indicating an extended corona region beyond existing theories.

Findings

Significant gamma-ray detection from a sample of 37 Seyfert galaxies.

Gamma-rays originate from both compact and extended corona regions.

Extended corona may be formed by pair expansion from the compact X-ray corona.

Abstract

Relativistic jets around supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are well-known powerful $\gamma$-ray emitters. In absence of the jets in radio-quiet active galactic nuclei (AGNs), how the SMBHs work in $\gamma$-ray bands is still unknown despite of great observational efforts made in the last 3 decades. Considering the previous efforts, we carefully select an AGN sample composed of 37 nearby Seyfert galaxies with ultra-hard X-rays for the goals of $\gamma$-ray detections by excluding all potential contamination in this band. Adopting a stacking technique, here we report the significant $\gamma$-ray detection (${\rm TS}=30.6$, or $5.2\,\sigma$) from the sample using 15-year Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT) observation. We find an average $\gamma$-ray luminosity of the sample as $(1.5\pm1.0)\times10^{40}{\,\rm erg\,s^{-1}}$ at energies from 1-300\,GeV. Limited by the well-known pair production from the interaction of $\gamma$-rays with low energy photons, $\gtrsim$ several GeV $\gamma$-rays are found to originate from an extended corona ($\sim 2.7\times 10^6\,R_{\rm g}$), whereas the canonical much more compact X-ray corona ($\sim 10\,R_{\rm g}$) is responsible for 1 to several GeV $\gamma$-rays. The finding of the compact region lends to strong supports to the long-time theoretical expectations, but the extended corona is beyond all the existing models. One promising scenario is that the electron-positron pairs produced in the compact X-ray corona would expand as fireball, similar to that in $\gamma$-ray bursts, forming the structure of extended corona.