Fermi Large Area Telescope Detection of Gamma Rays from the NGC 6251 Radio Lobe

We report the detection of extended γ -ray emission from lobes in the radio galaxy NGC 6251 using observation data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope. The maximum likelihood analysis results show that a radio morphology template provides a better fit than a pointlike source description for the obse...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yu-Wei Yu, Hai-Ming Zhang, Ying-Ying Gan, Xin-Ke Hu, Tan-Zheng Wu, Jin Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2024-01-01
Series:The Astrophysical Journal
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad2e07
Description
Summary:We report the detection of extended γ -ray emission from lobes in the radio galaxy NGC 6251 using observation data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope. The maximum likelihood analysis results show that a radio morphology template provides a better fit than a pointlike source description for the observational data at a confidence level of 8.1 σ , and the contribution of lobes constitutes more than 50% of the total γ -ray flux. Furthermore, the γ -ray energy spectra show a significant disparity in shape between the core and lobe regions, with a curved log-parabola shape observed in the core region and a power-law form observed in the lobes. Neither the core region nor the northwest (NW) lobe displays significant flux variations in the long-term γ -ray light curves. The broadband spectral energy distributions of the core region and the NW lobe can be explained with a single-zone leptonic model. The γ -rays of the core region are due to the synchrotron-self-Compton process, while the γ -rays from the NW lobe are interpreted as inverse Compton emission of the cosmic microwave background.
ISSN:1538-4357