Astronomy and Astrophysics Seminars

Fermi Bubbles: the biggest shock in the sky

by Prof. BIMAN NATH (Raman Research Institute, Bangalore)

Tuesday, April 21, 2015 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at TIFR ( DAA SEMINAR A269 )
Description
The Fermi LAT instrument discovered in 2010 two large bubbles protruding from the centre of the Milky Way. These ‘Fermi Bubbles’ are probably the signatures of an energetic event in the last several million years. I will discuss how a spurt of star formation, with a rate of roughly 0.5 solar mass per year in the centre of the Milky Way in the last 30 Myr, can produce a bubble moving against the halo gas and show features similar to the Fermi Bubbles. I will show that the X-ray emission from this phenomenon can explain the morphology and the observed surface brightness. Furthermore, with simple assumptions of accelerated electrons, we can also explain the microwave haze and the gamma-ray emission.