Probing the debris disks of nearby stars with Fermi-LAT
ORAL
Abstract
Many nearby stars are known to host circumstellar debris disks, similar to our Sun's asteroid and Kuiper belts, that are believed to be the birthplace of extrasolar planets. The bodies in these objects passively emit gamma radiation resulting from interactions with cosmic rays, as previously observed from measurements of the gamma ray albedo of the Moon. We apply a point source analysis to four nearby debris disks using the past nine years of data taken by Fermi-LAT, and report on the prospects for detecting gamma-ray emission from these sources.
*This work was supported by NSF grant AST-1263034, "REU Site: Astronomical Research and Instrumentation at Texas A&M University."
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