Title: Fermi Bubbles: A 10 Kpc Shock From The Galactic Center
Speaker: Meng Su (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)
Time: 2:00 pm; Friday Aug 12, 2011
Location: 3rd floor

Abstract:
Data from the Fermi-LAT reveal two large gamma-ray bubbles, extending 50 degrees above and below the Galactic center, with a width of about 40 degrees in longitude. The gamma-ray emission associated with these bubbles has a significantly harder spectrum (dN/dE ~ E^{−2}) than the IC emission from electrons in the Galactic disk, or the gamma-rays produced by decay of pions from proton-ISM collisions. The bubbles are spatially correlated with the hard-spectrum microwave excess known as the WMAP haze; the edges of the bubbles also line up with features in the ROSAT X-ray maps at 1.5 − 2 keV. I will summarize observational evidence of the Fermi bubbles, including features of polarization and rotation measure of the bubble edges. The bubbles have sharp edges in gamma-ray, X-ray, and polarized microwave emission. I'm going to argue that these Galactic gamma-ray bubbles are ongoing shocks (instead of a stable structure), and were most likely created by some large episode of energy injection in the Galactic center, such as past accretion events onto the central massive black hole, or a nuclear starburst in the last ∼10 Myr.