Nordita Astrophysics Seminars

A tale of three papers -- high-energy photons in the Milky Way

by Guðlaugur Jóhannesson (Nordita)

Europe/Stockholm
Description
In this talk I am going to overview three papers recently posted on arXiv: 1808.07596, 1810.04194, and 1810.11394. The topics of these papers are all related to observations of high-energy photons emitted throughout the Galaxy and how those observations connect with the origin and propagation of cosmic-rays (CRs). I will start with an overview of CRs in the Milky Way and follow up with a study of how the search for the highest-energy Galactic CR accelerators is affected by the interstellar radiation field. After that I will describe how gamma-ray observations of CRs interacting with debris disk-hosting main sequence stars can complement infrared observations of these objects. Finally, if time permits, I will describe improvements recently made in the event selection of the Fermi Large Area Telescope that significantly reduces background contamination.