Molecular Beam Dumps as Tracers of Hadronic Cosmic Ray Sources: the Case of SNR IC443
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The gamma-ray & neutrino visibility of cosmic ray (CR) accelerators will be dramatically increased by the presence of molecular material abutting such sites due to the increased probability of pion production -- and, in the case of neutral pions, subsequent gamma-decay. This was recognized by Pinkau, Montmerle, and Black & Fazio, and others in the 1970's. In an effort to examine the long-standing -- but unproven -- conjecture that galactic supernova remnants (SNRs) are indeed the sites of nucleonic CR acceleration to <~300TeV/n we have carried out a 3-way coincidence search between the SNRs in Green's (2001) catalog, the GeV range unidentified sources from the third EGRET catalog (Hartman et al.,1999), and molecular clouds, at low Galactic latitudes (|b|<~5 deg). In order to be quantitative regarding the distribution and amount of the ambient molecular masses we have extracted the CO(J=1->0) mm wavelength data from the compilation of Dame, Hartmann & Thaddeus (2001), at the best estimates of the various SNR distances. We outline the overall correlative study and examine the interesting case of SNR IC443, a likely accelerator of CR nuclei.
To be submitted to the Proceedings of the 2002 Moriond Gamma-Ray Universe Conference. Ammended to include clarification from A. Bykov regarding fits in Bykov et al. 2000
To be submitted to the Proceedings of the 2002 Moriond Gamma-Ray Universe Conference. Ammended to include clarification from A. Bykov regarding fits in Bykov et al. 2000