HAWC, VERITAS, Fermi-LAT, and XMM-Newton Follow-up Observations of the Unidentified Ultra-high-energy Gamma-Ray Source LHAASO J2108+5157 Academic Article in Scopus uri icon

abstract

  • We report observations of the ultra-high-energy gamma-ray source LHAASO J2108+5157, utilizing VERITAS, HAWC, Fermi-LAT, and XMM-Newton. VERITAS has collected ~40 hr of data that we used to set ULs to the emission above 200 GeV. The HAWC data, collected over ~2400 days, reveal emission between 3 and 146 TeV, with a significance of 7.5¿, favoring an extended source model. The best-fit spectrum measured by HAWC is characterized by a simple power law with a spectral index of 2.45 ± 0.11stat. Fermi-LAT analysis finds a point source with a very soft spectrum in the LHAASO J2108+5157 region, consistent with the 4FGL-DR3 catalog results. The XMM-Newton analysis yields a null detection of the source in the 2¿7 keV band. The broadband spectrum can be interpreted as a pulsar and a pulsar wind nebula system, where the GeV gamma-ray emission originates from an unidentified pulsar, and the X-ray and TeV emissions are attributed to synchrotron radiation and inverse Compton scattering of electrons accelerated within a pulsar wind nebula. In this leptonic scenario, our X-ray upper limit provides a stringent constraint on the magnetic field, which is ¿1.5 ¿G. © 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.

publication date

  • October 1, 2025