Searching for Gamma-Ray Binaries using the Fermi Second Source Catalog
Abstract
The Large Area Telescope (LAT) is an imaging high-energy gamma-ray telescope on the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope spacecraft. The Fermi LAT Second Source Catalog contains 1873 gamma-ray sources. A large fraction of these sources remain unidentified. Recently, a new class of gamma-ray source has emerged, the so-called "gamma-ray binaries", composed of a compact object and a massive star, distinguished by their relatively high gamma-ray luminosity in the 0.1-100 GeV range. However, only 5 gamma-ray systems have been identified thus far. Here we present an attempt to discover new gamma-ray binaries by studying unidentified Fermi LAT sources. First we identify radio sources from the NRAO/VLA Sky Survey which are positionally coincident with a Fermi source: the radio error circles are then searched for optical counterparts consistent with those of a gamma-ray binary (via optical/IR colors and spectroscopy). Here we present our attempts to identify 2 such systems - 2FGLJ0359.1+6003 and 2FGLJ0747.5-3305.
- Publication:
-
The X-ray Universe 2014
- Pub Date:
- July 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014xru..confE.296O