# A Self-Consistent Model for the Broad-band Spectrum of Sgr A East at the Galactic Center

## 1 Introduction

Sgr A East is an elliptical shell structure elongated along the Galactic plane with a major axis of length $`10.5`$ pc and a center displaced from the apparent dynamical nucleus, Sgr A West, by $`2.5`$ pc in projection toward negative Galactic latitudes. The latter is a ($`12`$ pc) three-arm spiral configuration of ionized gas (Ekers et al. 1983; Lo & Claussen 1983) that engulfs a compact nonthermal radio source, Sgr A\*, having a dimension between 1.1 AU and 0.1 AU (Morris & Serabyn 1996). The bulk of the thermally emitting Sgr A West appears to be located in front of Sgr A East (Yusef-Zadeh & Morris 1987; Pedlar et al. 1989), whose exact distance behind the nucleus is not known, but a number of arguments suggest that it is positioned very close to the Galactic center (e.g., Güsten & Downes 1980; Goss et al. 1989; Yusef-Zadeh et al. 1998). Thus, if present, the massive black hole (presumably associated with Sgr A\*) lies within the Sgr A East shell, but at one extreme end of its elongated structure.

Sgr A East may be a supernova remnant (SNR), but its inferred energetics ($`4\times 10^{52}`$ ergs; Mezger et al. 1989) and size appear to be extreme and have generated some uncertainty regarding this interpretation. The explosion that produced Sgr A East may have been the tidal disruption of a main sequence star whose trajectory took it within ten Schwarzschild radii of the central object (Khokhlov & Melia 1996). However, regardless of what actually caused the initial explosion, recent observations of this region at 1720 MHz (the transition frequency of OH maser emission) have revealed the presence of several maser spots on the remnant’s boundary (Yusef-Zadeh et al. 1996). This is important because OH masers can be effective tracers of shocks produced at the interface with molecular clouds, particularly for supernova remnants (Frail et al. 1994; Wardle, Yusef-Zadeh & Geballe 1998). Radio continuum observations of this object at $`\lambda \lambda 20`$ and $`6`$ cm (Pedlar et al. 1989) reveal that these sites are also nonthermal emitters, but if this is due to synchrotron, then a relativistic electron distribution with $`dN/dEE^\alpha `$ is required, where $`\alpha 2.53.3`$. This is rather peculiar for several reasons. First, such a particle spectrum is unlike that ($`\alpha 2.02.4`$; Jones & Ellison 1991) thought to be produced directly in shock acceleration. Second, this situation appears to be different from that of other SNRs in which $`\alpha 2.22.4`$ (e.g., Gaisser et al. 1998).

This latter distinction is very noticeable in view of the kinship between Sgr A East and other SNRs suggested by EGRET observations (see e.g., Green 1995; Esposito et al. 1996; Saken et al. 1992; Lessard et al. 1997). The Galactic center is very complex and the $`\gamma `$-rays from this region may be produced by other means. For example, the EGRET $`\gamma `$-ray source 2EGJ1746-2852 may be the black hole candidate Sgr A\* (Markoff, Melia & Sarcevic 1997; Mahadevan et al. 1997) or it may be due to a process different than what is producing the $`\gamma `$-ray emission in the SNRs (Melia, Yusef-Zadeh & Fatuzzo 1998; see below). Our goal in this Letter is to demonstrate in a self-consistent manner how the radio through TeV spectrum of Sgr A East may be produced with a single process, and how it can be placed in context with the other EGRET SNRs when one takes into account the differences between the ambient medium surrounding Sgr A East and that of the other remnants.

## 2 Clues from the Observed Spectra of Sgr A East and the other SNRs

EGRET has identified a central ($`<1^o`$) $`30`$ MeV \- $`10`$ GeV continuum source with luminosity $`2\times 10^{37}`$ ergs s<sup>-1</sup> (Mayer-Hasselwander et al. 1998). Its $`\gamma `$-ray flux does not vary down to the instrument sensitivity (roughly a $`20\%`$ amplitude), suggesting that it may be diffuse (see, however, Markoff, Melia & Sarcevic 1997). In a recent study (Melia, Yusef-Zadeh & Fatuzzo 1998), we showed that the $`\gamma `$-ray characteristics of 2EGJ1746-2852 may be understood as arising from inverse Compton scatterings between the power-law e<sup>-</sup> (inferred from the radio data) and the UV and IR photons from the nucleus. This is facilitated by the unique environment at the Galactic center, where the inner $`12`$ pc region is a source of intense (stellar) UV and (dust-reprocessed) far-IR radiation that bathes the extended synchrotron-emitting structures.

However, this analysis left several questions unanswered. For example, it is rather suspicious that the Galactic center $`\gamma `$-ray source has a similarly distinctive bump at $`0.11`$ GeV as the five SNRs detected by EGRET (see, e.g., Esposito et al. 1996). In their detailed calculations of the emission in the SNR shells of IC 443 and $`\gamma `$ Cygni, Gaisser, Protheroe and Stanev (1998) included the contribution to IC from microwave background radiation, the Galactic IR/optical background radiation and the IR resulting from shock-heated dust. At least in these SNRs, the dominant contributions to the $`\gamma `$-ray spectrum come from bremsstrahlung (by relativistic electrons colliding with the ambient proton distribution) and pion decay, the latter constituting the aforementioned $`70`$ MeV characteristic bump. Thus, if 2EGJ1746-2852 is the $`\gamma `$-ray counterpart to the radio emitting shell in Sgr A East, one might expect that its $`\gamma `$-ray bump could also be due to pion decays. At the same time, an observationally significant pion production rate in Sgr A East also offers the exciting possibility that the $`e^+e^{}`$ pion decay byproducts may produce the $`\alpha 3`$ power-law distribution inferred from Sgr A East’s radio spectrum, and these particles then also self-consistently account for the underlying $`\gamma `$-ray spectrum via either bremsstrahlung, or the IC scattering of the central IR and UV photons.

We work with the hypothesis that the EGRET $`\gamma `$-ray bump is due primarily to $`\pi ^0`$ decays ($`\pi ^0\gamma \gamma `$), these being produced in $`pp`$ scatterings between ambient protons and a relativistic population accelerated by shocks within the Sgr A East shell. In this process, a multiplicity of pions is produced, the charged members of which decay leptonically ($`\pi ^\pm \mu ^\pm \nu _\mu `$, with $`\mu ^\pm e^\pm \nu _e\nu _\mu `$). We first find the physical conditions required to produce this $`\gamma `$-ray bump, and then use the associated electrons and positrons produced in the pion decays to calculate the radio spectrum. Fitting the synchrotron emission to the VLA data (see Fig. 3) is then a matter of adjusting just one unknown, viz. the average magnetic field $`B`$ in the gyration region, though this is expected to be close to equipartition.

A full description of our $`pp`$ scattering algorithm is given elsewhere (Markoff, Melia & Sarcevic 1997, 1998). Briefly, we assume that the accelerated protons are accelerated at the shock with a rate of $`\dot{\rho }_p(E_p)=\rho _oE_p^{\alpha _p}`$ cm<sup>-3</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> GeV<sup>-1</sup>. The steady-state proton spectral index is thought to lie in the range of $`2.02.4`$ (Jones & Ellison 1991), and is determined from a diffusion loss treatment. Because the protons are ultrarelativistic, the leading order nucleons produced will continue contributing to the spectrum via multiple collisions in an ensuing cascade, until they lose enough of their energy to rejoin the ambient plasma. The procedure for calculating the pion production rate is complicated by the energy dependence of the pion multiplicity and the $`pp`$ scattering cross section. Fortunately, uncertainties in the $`pp`$ scattering are likely to be smaller than $`2030\%`$, within the possible errors of the astrophysical components, such as the source size. We calculate the steady-state proton distribution resulting from the balance of injection from the shock, cascade collisions producing secondary particles which feed back into the system, and synchrotron and inverse Compton losses. We note that proton-photoproduction processes are here relatively insignificant, since the maximum energy attained by the relativistic protons in the face of energy losses due to $`pp`$ scatterings and other processes is about $`5\times 10^6`$ GeV, close to the pair creation threshold for protons scattering off UV radiation (see below).

In Figure 1, we show the $`\gamma `$-ray spectrum produced from $`\pi ^0`$ decays for two different cases, characterized by their respective values of $`\alpha _p`$ and the ambient proton density $`n_p`$. Of course, the full spectrum will be the sum of this component and those arising from bremsstrahlung and inverse Compton scattering, which we consider below. However, we can already see that the fit to the $`\gamma `$-ray data between $`100`$ MeV and $`10`$ GeV is rather robust over a range of conditions. What does change from case to case is the energy content in the relativistic proton population, which is related to the efficiency introduced above. So, for example, when the ambient proton density $`n_p`$ is low (Case 2), the removal rate of protons from the relativistic distribution is smaller than that in Case 1, resulting in a higher equilibrium density of relativistic protons. This is why the energy content of these particles is much higher in Case 2 than in Case 1, accounting for roughly $`77\%`$ and $`1\%`$ of a typical SN burst of $`10^{51}`$ ergs for these two situations, respectively.

The electron distribution resulting from these two Cases is shown in Figure 2. The $`e^{}`$ and $`e^+`$ distributions can mimic a power-law with a spectral index $`3`$ very well, consistent with the value implied by the radio spectrum of Sgr A East. Apparently, the leptons produced in $`\pi ^\pm `$ decays in this source are numerically dominant over those accelerated directly within shocks. In fact, assuming the same spectral index for the electrons and protons, the shock would have to accelerate roughly $`1,200`$ as many of the former compared to the latter at any given energy in order to account for the synchrotron emissivity without the decay leptons. This imbalance comes about because (1) each relativistic proton produces an average of $`2030`$ electrons and (2) a shock accelerated electron distribution would contain a much larger contribution from low energy electrons than the distribution shown in Figure 2, which shows a deficiency at small $`\gamma `$.

These relativistic electrons are immersed in an intense source of UV and IR radiation from the central $`12`$ parsecs. The Circumnuclear Disk (CND) is a powerful source ($`10^7L_{}`$) of mid to far-infrared continuum emission with a dust temperature of $`100`$ K (e.g., Telesco et al. 1996; Davidson et al. 1992). This radiation is due to reprocessing by warm dust that has absorbed the same power in the UV (Becklin, Gatley and Werner 1982; Davidson et al. 1992). Models of the photodissociation regions in the CND require an incident flux ($`6`$ eV $`<h\nu <13.6`$ eV) of $`10^2`$$`10^3`$ erg cm<sup>-2</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> (Wolfire, Tielens & Hollenbach, 1990), implying a total UV luminosity of about $`2\times 10^7L_{}`$. This radiation field has a specific photon number density per solid angle $`n_{ph}^{tot}(\epsilon )n_{ph}^{UV}(\epsilon )+n_{ph}^{IR}(\epsilon )`$, where $`n_{ph}^{UV}(\epsilon )=N_0^{UV}(2\epsilon ^2/h^3c^3)(\mathrm{exp}\{\epsilon /kT^{UV}\}1)^1`$, and $`n_{ph}^{IR}(\epsilon )=N_0^{IR}(2\epsilon ^3/h^3c^3)(\mathrm{exp}\{\epsilon /kT^{IR}\}1)^1`$. Here, $`\epsilon `$ is the lab-frame photon energy and $`T^{UV}`$ and $`T^{IR}`$ are, respectively, the temperature (assumed to be $`30,000`$ K) of the stellar UV component and of the reprocessed CND radiation, which is assumed to peak at $`50\mu `$m, corresponding to a characteristic temperature $`T^{IR}100`$ K. The normalization constants $`N_0^{UV}`$ and $`N_0^{IR}`$ incorporate the dilution in photon number density as the radiation propagates outwards from the central core. This is calculated assuming that the radiation emanates from a sphere of radius $`1`$ pc for the UV, and that the IR luminosity is $`10^7L_{}`$ from a disk with radius $`2`$ pc.

The calculation of the inverse Compton (X-ray and $`\gamma `$-ray) emissivity for this known $`e^+e^{}`$ population bathed by the IR and UV radiation is carried out according to what is now a standard procedure (see, for example, Melia, Yusef-Zadeh & Fatuzzo 1998). The upscattered radiation is emitted isotropically from within a volume $`V250`$ pc<sup>3</sup> in Sgr A East, corresponding to a shell with radius $`R5`$ pc and thickness $`\mathrm{\Delta }R1`$ pc. The centroid of this structure is assumed to lie at $`7`$ pc behind the nucleus. The remaining continuum component of importance is bremsstrahlung radiation resulting from the interaction between the relativistic leptons and the ambient (fixed target) nuclei (see Koch & Motz 1959). Thus, the overall spectrum from Sgr A East is a superposition of the $`\gamma `$-rays from $`\pi ^0`$ decays, synchrotron radiation by the relativistic leptons produced during the decay of the charged pions, bremsstrahlung emission by these electrons and positrons, and their Comptonization of the IR and UV radiation from the central $`12`$ pc.

## 3 Discussion

The key result of our calculations is displayed in Figure 3 for Case 2 above. The inferred magnetic field is $`10^5`$ Gauss, which is within a factor of $`2`$ of the equipartition value of $`B`$ in Sgr A East, assuming a radio luminosity of $`1.8\times 10^{35}`$ ergs s<sup>-1</sup> arising from relativistic leptons gyrating in a magnetic field over a volume of $`250`$ pc<sup>3</sup>. The ASCA measurement is an upper limit, since it does not distinguish between thermal and nonthermal emission from this region. Our predicted hard X-ray spectrum is also consistent with Ginga observations, which show evidence of a hard tail in the diffuse X-ray spectrum from the inner region of the Galaxy (Yamasaki et al. 1996), and with the current OSSE upper limits (Purcell et al. 1997). At the highest energy measurement to date, a 270 minute exposure by the Whipple observatory produced a small excess ($`2.5\sigma `$) of $`>2.0`$ TeV emission from within the EGRET error box of 2EG J1746-2852, yielding an integrated flux upper limit of $`0.45\times 10^{11}`$ cm<sup>-2</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> (Buckley et al. 1997). Although this signal is at best only $`2.5\sigma `$ above the noise, our calculated spectrum would be consistent with a detection at this level.

Case 1 would not produce an acceptable spectrum because the larger ambient proton density ($`n_p=10^3`$ cm<sup>-3</sup>) results in a significantly higher lepton bremsstrahlung flux. The spectral shape would then also not be a good fit to the data since the $`\gamma `$-rays from $`\pi ^0`$ decays would be swamped by the other radiative components. In fact, we found it very difficult to fit this broadband spectrum with any ambient density in excess of $`10`$ cm<sup>-3</sup>. This raises an interesting issue, since the energy content in the relativistic protons (see above) is then a large fraction ($`0.50.8`$) of the energy in a “standard” SN burst ($`10^{51}`$ ergs). On the other hand, this relativistic energy content would constitute only $`12\%`$ of the available energy if the burst that produced the Sgr A East remnant was $`4\times 10^{52}`$ ergs, as suggested by other observations (see above). Our results may therefore be somewhat consistent with the supposition that Sgr A East was produced not by a single, standard supernova explosion, but rather by several such events, or a single more catastrophic incident, such as the tidal disruption of a star. In both Cases 1 and 2 we adopted a value of $`\alpha _p`$ within a narrow range close to $`2`$. We found our fit to be very sensitive to $`\alpha _p`$. Even with the large error bars associated with the VLA points, a proton distribution steeper than this produces a steeper lepton distribution, whose synchrotron emissivity does not fit the radio data. A shallower proton index is, of course, uncomfortably below the theoretical range.

If the $`\gamma `$-rays detected by EGRET are indeed produced in this fashion, it seems inevitable to us that the upscattered IR and UV photons should result in a significant intensity at intermediate (i.e., $`10100`$ keV) energies, as indicated in Figure 3. This flux density ($`10^3`$ photons cm<sup>-2</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> MeV<sup>-1</sup>) may be above the sensitivity limit (at $`10^7`$ photons cm<sup>-2</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> MeV<sup>-1</sup> for a point source) of UNEX, a proposed balloon flight instrument (Rothschild 1998).

Other than the overall energetics, it appears that the main distinction between Sgr A East and the SNRs is the intensity of the external radiation upscattered by the relativistic electrons and positrons. Whereas the ambient soft photon intensity in the latter is too low to produce an observationally significant spectral component compared to bremsstrahlung (Gaisser, Protheroe & Stanev 1998), the IR and UV radiation from the Galactic center does produce a dominant broadband continuum when scattering with the relativistic leptons in Sgr A East.

Acknowledgments This research was partially supported by NASA under grant NAGW-2518 and by an NSF Graduate Fellowship.