Studying the non-thermal lobes of IRAS 16547−4247 through a multi-wavelength approach

¹ Departament d’Astronomia i MeteorologiaInstitut de Ciències del Cosmos (ICC), Universitat de Barcelona (IEEC-UB), Martí i Franquès 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: pmunar@am.ub.es
² ICREA and Institut de Ciències del Cosmos (ICC), Universitat de Barcelona (IEEC-UB), Martí i Franquès 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain

Received: 24 May 2013
Accepted: 4 September 2013

Abstract

In recent years, massive protostars have turned out to be a possible population of high-energy emitters. Among the best candidates is IRAS 16547-4247, a protostar that presents a powerful outflow with clear signatures of interaction with its environment. This source has been revealed to be a potential high-energy source because it displays non-thermal radio emission of synchrotron origin, which is evidence of relativistic particles. To improve our understanding of IRAS 16547-4247 as a high-energy source, we analyzed XMM-Newton archival data and found that IRAS 16547−4247 is a hard X-ray source. We discuss these results in the context of a refined one-zone model and previous radio observations. From our study we find that it may be difficult to explain the X-ray emission as non-thermal radiation coming from the interaction region, but it might be produced by thermal Bremsstrahlung (plus photo-electric absorption) by a fast shock at the jet end. In the high-energy range, the source might be detectable by the present generation of Cherenkov telescopes, and may eventually be detected by Fermi in the GeV range.