publication 18-May-2013 13:03:05

SPI observations of the diffuse 60Fe emission in the Galaxy

Publication date: 30 April 2007

Authors: Wang, W. et al.

Journal: to appear in A&A
arXiv:0704.3895v1 [astro-ph]
Year: 2007

Gamma-ray line emission from radioactive decay of 60Fe provides constraints on nucleosynthesis in massive stars and supernovae. The spectrometer SPI on board INTEGRAL has accumulated nearly three years of data on gamma-ray emission from the Galactic plane. We have analyzed these data with suitable instrumental-background models and sky distributions to produce high-resolution spectra of Galactic emission. We detect the gamma-ray lines from 60Fe decay at 1173 and 1333 keV, obtaining an improvement over our earlier measurement of both lines with now 4.9 sigma significance for the combination of the two lines. The average flux per line is (4.4 +- 0.9) x 10-5 ph cm-2 s-1 rad-1 for the inner Galaxy region. Deriving the Galactic 26Al gamma-ray line flux with using the same set of observations and analysis method, we determine the flux ratio of 60Fe/26Al gamma-rays as 0.148 +- 0.06. The current theoretical predictions are still consistent with our result.

Link to Publication: http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.3895


Last Update: 25 June 2007

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