Gamma-ray emission from microquasars: Leptonic vs. hadronic models

Abstract

In this work we discuss two different types of models for the high-energy gamma-ray production in microquasars. On the one hand, we introduce a new leptonic model where the emission arises from inverse Compton interactions with both internal (synchrotron) and external photon fields, and relativistic Bremsstrahlung from interactions with cold protons in the jet and the stellar wind material. On the other hand, we introduce a hadronic model where the gamma rays are the result of interactions between relativistic protons in the jet and cold protons from the anisotropic stellar wind. Spectral differences and similarities between both types of models are briefly discussed. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.