Cold ultrarelativistic pulsar winds as potential sources of [...] (Aharonian et al.)

Vol. 547
In section 2. Astrophysical processes

Cold ultrarelativistic pulsar winds as potential sources of galactic gamma-ray lines above 100GeV

The authors argue that possible lines, such as 130 GeV signals detected with Fermi-LAT, may be produced by inverse Compton scattering in the strongly relativistic limit (Klein-Nishima), depending on the energy spectrum of the scattering electrons. An important feature, which this is independent of the radiation distribution, is shown to situate the likely scatterers in pulsar winds. The nonthermal electron distribution is reasonable for such sources, and their distribution in the Galactic center region is consistent with the observations. As such, this severely challenges the uniqueness of the decaying dark matter explanations for the line-like feature.