TGRS Observations of Positron Annihilation in Classical Novae

Details TGRS Observations of Positron Annihilation in Classical Novae TGRS Observations of Positron Annihilation in Classical Novae

2000-04-12

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0004169v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

5 pp. inc. 3 figs. Proc. 5th Compton Symposium (AIP Conf. Series), ed. M. McConnell, in press

Scientific paper

10.1063/1.1303180

The TGRS experiment on board the Wind spacecraft has many advantages as a sky monitor --- broad field of view (~2 pi) centered on the south ecliptic pole), long life (1994-present), and stable low background and continuous coverage due to Wind's high altitude high eccentricity orbit. The Ge detector has sufficient energy resolution (3-4 keV at 511 keV) to resolve a cosmic positron annihilation line from the strong background annihilation line from beta-decays induced by cosmic ray impacts on the instrument, if the cosmic line is Doppler-shifted by this amount. Such lines (blueshifted) are predicted from nucleosynthesis in classical novae. We have searched the entire TGRS database for 1995-1997 for this line, with negative results. In principle such a search could yield an unbiased upper limit on the highly-uncertain Galactic nova rate. We carefully examined the times around the known nova events during this period, also with negative results. The upper limit on the nova line flux in a 6-hr interval is typically <3.8 E-3 photon/(cm2 s) at 4.6 sigma. We performed the same analysis for times around the outburst of Nova Vel 1999, obtaining a worse limit due to recent degradation of the detector response caused by cosmic ray induced damage.

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