An Optically Motivated Gamma-ray Study of Fermi-LAT Novae
Abstract
High-energy (GeV) gamma-ray emission from nova eruptions was a surprise detection by the Fermi-LAT in 2010. Since then, it has been suggested that the gamma-rays from these systems are generated in collisionless non-relativistic shocks. In this theory, the observed correlation between optical and gamma-ray nova lightcurves naturally arises if a portion of the optical luminosity is reprocessed shock power. In this work, we investigate this scenario by analyzing Fermi-LAT-detected novae in varied time bins and then correlating the bin size that maximizes the nova's significance (tgam) with the nova's optical eruption data. Furthermore, we investigate whether there is a common optical decay across the sources' measured tgam values in the population. We find that across our population, a nova's t3 (the time it takes the nova V band brightness to decay 3 magnitudes) appears to be the favored analysis bin that optimizes the Fermi-LAT detection significance, although there is significant spread. Additionally, we report V679 Car, a source previously noted as a marginally detected gamma-ray nova, as a >5 σ detection in this work. We perform cross-correlation analysis of gamma-ray and optical lightcurves.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{henry2026optically,
title = {{An Optically Motivated Gamma-ray Study of Fermi-LAT Novae}},
author = {Owen K. Henry and Timothy A. D. Paglione and David Zurek and Joshua Tan},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.10388},
eprint = {2608.10388},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10388},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - An Optically Motivated Gamma-ray Study of Fermi-LAT Novae
AU - Owen K. Henry
AU - Timothy A. D. Paglione
AU - David Zurek
AU - Joshua Tan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/11
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.10388
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10388
AB - High-energy (GeV) gamma-ray emission from nova eruptions was a surprise detection by the Fermi-LAT in 2010. Since then, it has been suggested that the gamma-rays from these systems are generated in collisionless non-relativistic shocks. In this theory, the observed correlation between optical and gamma-ray nova lightcurves naturally arises if a portion of the optical luminosity is reprocessed shock power. In this work, we investigate this scenario by analyzing Fermi-LAT-detected novae in varied time bins and then correlating the bin size that maximizes the nova's significance (tgam) with the nova's optical eruption data. Furthermore, we investigate whether there is a common optical decay across the sources' measured tgam values in the population. We find that across our population, a nova's t_3 (the time it takes the nova V band brightness to decay 3 magnitudes) appears to be the favored analysis bin that optimizes the Fermi-LAT detection significance, although there is significant spread. Additionally, we report V679 Car, a source previously noted as a marginally detected gamma-ray nova, as a >5 σ detection in this work. We perform cross-correlation analysis of gamma-ray and optical lightcurves.
ER -