High-energy gamma-ray study of the dynamically young SNR G150.3+4.5

¹ Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, CENBG, UMR 5797, 33170 Gradignan, France
e-mail: devin@cenbg.in2p3.fr; jdevin.phys@gmail.com
² Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
³ Laboratoire AIM, CEA-IRFU/CNRS/Université Paris Diderot, Département d’Astrophysique, CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁴ Department of Physics, University of North Florida, 1 UNF Drive, Jacksonville, FL 32224, USA

Received: 26 May 2020
Accepted: 11 September 2020

Abstract

Aims. The supernova remnant (SNR) G150.3+4.5 was recently discovered in the radio band; it exhibits a shell-like morphology with an angular size of ~ 3°, suggesting either an old or a nearby SNR. Extended γ-ray emission spatially coincident with the SNR was reported in the Fermi Galactic Extended Source Catalog, with a power-law spectral index of Γ = 1.91 ± 0.09. Studying particle acceleration in SNRs through their γ-ray emission is of primary concern to assess the nature of accelerated particles and the maximum energy they can reach.

Methods. Using more than ten years of Fermi-LAT data, we investigate the morphological and spectral properties of the SNR G150.3+4.5 from 300 MeV to 3 TeV. We use the latest releases of the Fermi-LAT catalog, the instrument response functions and the Galactic and isotropic diffuse emissions. We use ROSAT all-sky survey data to assess any thermal and nonthermal X-ray emission, and we derive minimum and maximum distance to G150.3+4.5.

Results. We describe the γ-ray emission of G150.3+4.5 by an extended component which is found to be spatially coincident with the radio SNR. The spectrum is hard and the detection of photons up to hundreds of GeV points towards an emission from a dynamically young SNR. The lack of X-ray emission gives a tight constraint on the ambient density n₀ ≤ 3.6 × 10⁻³ cm⁻³. Since G150.3+4.5 is not reported as a historical SNR, we impose a lower limit on its age of t = 1 kyr. We estimate its distance to be between 0.7 and 4.5 kpc. We find that G150.3+4.5 is spectrally similar to other dynamically young and shell-type SNRs, such as RX J1713.7−3946 or Vela Junior. The broadband nonthermal emission is explained with a leptonic scenario, implying a downstream magnetic field of B = 5 μG and acceleration of particles up to few TeV energies.