[162.01] Observations of the Galaxy Clusters Perseus and Abell 2029 with the Whipple 10 m Cherenkov Telescope

AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 162 X-ray and Gamma ray Observations of Clusters of Galaxies
Oral, Wednesday, 2:00-3:30pm, January 11, 2006, Salon 3

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[162.01] Observations of the Galaxy Clusters Perseus and Abell 2029 with the Whipple 10 m Cherenkov Telescope

H. Krawczynski, J. Perkins (Washington University in St. Louis), VERITAS Collaboration

Galaxy clusters might be sources of TeV gamma-rays emitted by high-energy protons and electrons accelerated by large scale structure formation shocks, galactic winds, or cluster active galactic nuclei. Furthermore, gamma-rays may be produced in dark matter particle annihilation processes at the cluster cores. In this contribution, we first discuss the expected gamma-ray emission from galaxy clusters. Subsequently, we discuss the results from our observations of the Perseus and A 2029 clusters with the Whipple 10 m Cherenkov telescope in the GeV/TeV energy band. The observations constrain the energy density of high energy cosmic rays in the intracluster medium. We close with a discussion of future gamma-ray observations of galaxy clusters with the VERITAS and GLAST gamma-ray telescopes.

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