Detectability of 100 TeV Gamma Rays from PeV Cosmic Rays Accelerated in the Early Phase of a Supernova Shock Wave

Abstract

Galactic cosmic rays (CRs) are thought to be accelerated by diffusive shock acceleration in supernova remnants (SNRs), but observations of SNRs aged ~100-1000 yr suggest maximum CR energies below the PeV level. Recently, Inoue et al. (2021) showed with kinetic-MHD simulations that CRs can be accelerated to ~3 PeV when a blast wave shock propagates through dense circumstellar material (CSM) within tens of days after explosion. Such CSM can be produced by a red-supergiant (RSG) wind with an observationally motivated mass-loss rate of ~10^-3 Ms/yr. 100 TeV gamma-rays from neutral pion decay can test PeV CR acceleration. However, hadronic gamma-rays from very young SNRs can be significantly attenuated by supernova photospheric photons and the cosmic background radiation. Using the CR distribution functions and CSM density profiles from Inoue et al. (2021), we calculate time-dependent gamma-ray fluxes from Type II-P SNe, including both attenuation processes. We find that photospheric photons attenuate the intrinsic 1-100 TeV gamma-ray flux by about one order of magnitude. For the dense CSM case with dot{M}_RSG ~ 10^-3 Ms/yr and an outer CSM radius of ~ 3x10^15 cm, CTA can detect 100 TeV gamma-rays with a 50 h observation out to ~ 4 Mpc (this is reduced to 3 Mpc if the spatial extent of the CSM is shrunk to 2x10^15 cm). These results suggest that early 100 TeV observations of nearby Type II-P SNe can probe PeV CR acceleration in sufficiently dense and extended CSM.