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

Yu Wei Yu, Hai Ming Zhang, Ying Ying Gan, Xin Ke Hu, Tan Zheng Wu, Jin Zhang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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 8.1σ, 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.

Original languageEnglish
Article number163
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume965
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2024

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