Temporal evolution of the periodic GeV signal from 4FGL J1913.2+0512 and analysis of the SS 433 / W50 lobes

TL;DR

This study analyzes 16 years of Fermi LAT data to investigate the temporal evolution of GeV gamma-ray signals from SS 433 and its surroundings, revealing a precessional modulation that diminishes over time.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of the long-term temporal evolution of gamma-ray emission and precessional modulation from SS 433 using extensive Fermi LAT data.

Findings

Detected the GeV source 4FGL J1913.2+0512 with a power-law spectrum.

Confirmed a ~162-day precessional modulation in gamma-ray flux during the first 10 years.

Observed a decline in modulation significance over the full 16-year period, indicating evolving gamma-ray production.

Abstract

SS 433 is a microquasar whose relativistic jets precess every ~162 days, providing a laboratory for jet-interstellar medium interactions. We present a comprehensive analysis of 16 years of Fermi Large Area Telescope data (August 2008-September 2024) of the SS 433/W50 field, using events in the 0.3-300 GeV range and employing pulsar gating to mitigate contamination from the bright nearby pulsar PSR J1907+0602. We detect the GeV source 4FGL J1913.2+0512 (TS = 45, where TS denotes the likelihood-ratio Test Statistic) with a power-law spectrum (photon index 2.61 +- 0.08) and confirm a GeV excess at the western lobe (TS = 17). The eastern lobe of SS 433 is hinted at with lower significance. One additional GeV excess, Fermi J1909.6+0552 (TS = 20; TS = 28 over 0.1-300 GeV), located outside the SS 433 / W50 system, is revealed after gating. Exposure-corrected Lomb-Scargle periodograms and precessional phase-folded light curves show a ~162-day modulation in 4FGL J1913.2+0512. This periodicity is prominent during the first 10 years of the mission (2008-2018) but disappears thereafter, with the phase-folded flux concentrated in precessional phases 0.0-0.5. Over the full 16-year dataset, the modulation remains detectable but with reduced significance, consistent with dilution by the later non-modulated epoch. These results indicate that the efficiency and/or geometry of gamma-ray production in the SS 433 environment evolves on multi-year timescales.