Models for gamma-ray production in low-mass microquasars

Abstract

Unlike high-mass gamma-ray binaries, low-mass microquasars lack external sources of radiation and matter that could produce high-energy emission through interactions with relativistic particles. In this work, we consider the synchrotron emission of protons and leptons that populate the jet of a low-mass microquasar. In our model photohadronic and inverse Compton (IC) interactions with synchrotron photons produced by both protons and leptons result in a high-energy tail of the spectrum. We also estimate the contribution from secondary pairs injected through photopair production. The high-energy emission is dominated by radiation of hadronic origin, so we can call these objects "proton microquasars".