Attila Abramowski Hamburg

Time-dependent absorption of very high-energy (VHE) gamma-rays from the Galactic center by pair-production (pdf)

VHE gamma-rays have been detected from the direction of the Galactic center. The H.E.S.S. telescopes have located this gamma-ray source with a position uncertainty of 6''. Within the uncertainty region several possible counterpart candidates exist: The Super Massive Black Hole (SMBH) Sgr A*, the Pulsar Wind Nebula candidate G359.95-0.04, a Low Mass X-Ray Binary-system, the stellar cluster IRS 13, as well as self-annihilating dark matter. It is experimentally very challenging to further improve the positional accuracy in this energy range and therefore, it may not be possible in the near future to clearly align one of the counterpart candidates with the VHE-source. In this talk I will present a new method to investigate a possible link of the VHE-source with the near environment of Sgr A*. The method developed uses the time- and energy-dependent effect of absorption of VHE gamma- rays by pair-production with low-energy photons of stars (so called S-Stars) orbiting the SMBH Sgr A*.