Speaker
Description
Initially unidentified gamma-ray source HESS J1303-631 has been believed to be an evolved Pulsar Wind Nebula (PWN) associated with the pulsar PSR J1301-6305 on account of its energy-dependent morphology that features shrinking of the emission region with energy towards the location of the pulsar. Primarily detected by H.E.S.S. above 1 TeV, it was subsequently also detected by Fermi-LAT at GeV energies, showing an extended emission to the east of the pulsar location. Radio observations of the surrounding region conducted with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) showed no sign of radio counterparts of the PWN, but revealed a shell-like supernova remnant (SNR) candidate, G304.4-0.2, to the north-east of HESS J1303-631. A clear shell-like morphology of the SNR candidate, which we call Mavka, was recently confirmed by the ASKAP and MeerKAT surveys.
In this work, we revisit the GeV emission from the region and show that part of the emission initially associated with HESS J1303-631 may in fact be associated with the Mavka SNR. We perform a detailed morphology study that results in a significant detection of the gamma-ray emission spatially coincident with the remnant. We report on the data analysis results and implications of the SNR scenario.
