Probing the hadronic nature of the gamma-ray emission associated with Westerlund 2

Emma de Ona Wilhelmi, Enrique Mestre, Diego F. Torres, Tim Lukas Holch, Ullrich Schwanke, Felix Aharonian, Pablo Saz Parkinson, Ruizhi Yang, Roberta Zanin

Published 2021-09-16Version 1

Star-forming regions have been proposed as potential Galactic cosmic-ray accelerators for decades. Cosmic ray acceleration can be probed through observations of gamma-rays produced in inelastic proton-proton collisions, at GeV and TeV energies. We analyze more than 11 years of Fermi-LAT data from the direction of Westerlund 2, one of the most massive and best-studied star-forming regions in our Galaxy. The spectral and morphological characteristics of the LAT source agree with the ones in the TeV regime (HESS J1023-575), allowing the description of the gamma-ray source from a few hundreds of MeV to a few tens of TeVs. We will present the results and discuss the implications of the identification with the stellar cluster and the radiation mechanism involved.