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  • CANGAROO-III Search for TeV...
    Kiuchi, R; Mori, M; Bicknell, G. V; Clay, R. W; Edwards, P. G; Enomoto, R; Gunji, S; Hara, S; Hara, T; Hattori, T; Hayashi, S; Higashi, Y; Hirai, Y; Inoue, K; Itoh, C; Kabuki, S; Kajino, F; Katagiri, H; Kawachi, A; Kifune, T; Kubo, H; Kushida, J; Matsubara, Y; Mizukami, T; Mizumoto, Y; Mizuniwa, R; Muraishi, H; Muraki, Y; Naito, T; Nakamori, T; Nakano, S; Nishida, D; Nishijima, K; Ohishi, M; Sakamoto, Y; Seki, A; Stamatescu, V; Suzuki, T; Swaby, D. L; Tanimori, T; Thornton, G; Tokanai, F; Tsuchiya, K; Watanabe, S; Yamada, Y; Yamazaki, E; Yanagita, S; Yoshida, T; Yoshikoshi, T; Yukawa, Y

    The Astrophysical journal, 10/2009, Letnik: 704, Številka: 1
    Journal Article

    Because accretion and merger shocks in clusters of galaxies may accelerate particles to high energies, clusters are candidate sites for the origin of ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic rays. A prediction was presented for gamma-ray emission from a cluster of galaxies at a detectable level with the current generation of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. The gamma-ray emission was produced via inverse Compton upscattering of cosmic microwave background photons by electron-positron pairs generated by collisions of UHE cosmic rays in the cluster. We observed two clusters of galaxies, Abell 3667 and Abell 4038, searching for very high energy gamma-ray emission with the CANGAROO-III atmospheric Cherenkov telescope system in 2006. The analysis showed no significant excess around these clusters, yielding upper limits on the gamma-ray emission. From a comparison of the upper limit for the northwest radio relic region of Abell 3667 with a model prediction, we derive a lower limit for the magnetic field of the region of ~0.1 Delta *mG. This shows the potential of gamma-ray observations in studies of the cluster environment. We also discuss the flux upper limit from cluster center regions using a model of gamma-ray emission from neutral pions produced in hadronic collisions of cosmic-ray protons with the intracluster medium. The derived upper limit of the cosmic-ray energy density within this framework is an order of magnitude higher than that of our Galaxy.