J. Brucker

The radio counterpart of the likely TeV binary HESS J0632+057

The few known gamma-ray binary systems are all associated with variable radioand X-ray emission. The TeV source HESS J0632+057, apparently associated withthe Be star MWC148, is plausibly a new member of this class. Following theidentification of a variable X-ray counterpart to the TeV source we conductedGMRT and VLA observations in June-September 2008 to search for the radiocounterpart of this object. A point-like radio source at the position of thestar is detected in both 1280 MHz GMRT and 5 GHz VLA observations, with anaverage spectral index, alpha, of ~0.6. In the VLA data there is significantflux variability on ~month timescales around the mean flux density of ~0.3 mJy.These radio properties (and the overall spectral energy distribution) areconsistent with an interpretation of HESS J0632+057 as a lower power analogueof the established gamma-ray binary systems.

Discovery of gamma-ray emission from the extragalactic pulsar wind nebula N157B with the High Energy Stereoscopic System

We present the significant detection of the first extragalactic pulsar wind nebula (PWN) detected in gamma rays, N157B, located in the large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Pulsars with high spin-down luminosity are found to power energised nebulae that emit gamma rays up to energies of several tens of TeV. N157B is associated with PSRJ0537-6910, which is the pulsar with the highest known spin-down luminosity. The High Energy Stereoscopic System telescope array observed this nebula on a yearly basis from 2004 to 2009 with a dead-time corrected exposure of 46 h. The gamma-ray spectrum between 600 GeV and 12 TeV is well-described by a pure power-law with a photon index of 2.8 \pm 0.2(stat) \pm 0.3(syst) and a normalisation at 1 TeV of (8.2 \pm 0.8(stat) \pm 2.5(syst)) \times 10^-13 cm^-2s^-1TeV^-1. A leptonic multi-wavelength model shows that an energy of about 4 \times 10^49erg is stored in electrons and positrons. The apparent efficiency, which is the ratio of the TeV gamma-ray luminosity to the pulsars spindown luminosity, 0.08% \pm 0.01%, is comparable to those of PWNe found in the Milky Way. The detection of a PWN at such a large distance is possible due to the pulsars favourable spin-down luminosity and a bright infrared photon-field serving as an inverse-Compton-scattering target for accelerated leptons. By applying a calorimetric technique to these observations, the pulsars birth period is estimated to be shorter than 10 ms.