Non-thermal X-rays from colliding wind shock acceleration in the massive binary Eta Carinae

Abstract

Cosmic-ray acceleration has been a long-standing mystery^1,2 and, despite more than a century of study, we still do not have a complete census of acceleration mechanisms. The collision of strong stellar winds in massive binary systems creates powerful shocks that have been expected to produce high-energy cosmic rays through Fermi acceleration at the shock interface. The accelerated particles should collide with stellar photons or ambient material, producing non-thermal emission observable in X-rays and γ-rays^3,4. The supermassive binary star Eta Carinae (η Car) drives the strongest colliding wind shock in the solar neighbourhood^5,6. Observations with non-focusing high-energy observatories indicate a high-energy source near η Car, but have been unable to conclusively identify η Car as the source because of their relatively poor angular resolution^7-9. Here we present direct focussing observations of the non-thermal source in the extremely hard X-ray band, which is found to be spatially coincident with the star within several arc-seconds. These observations show that the source of non-thermal X-rays varies with the orbital phase of the binary, and that the photon index of the emission is similar to that derived through analysis of the γ-ray spectrum. This is conclusive evidence that the high-energy emission indeed originates from non-thermal particles accelerated at colliding wind shocks.