Validate the historical PeV activity and its connection to wind-state changes

Determine whether the much brighter PeV emission reported by air-shower experiments in the 1980s was genuine and whether it was produced by changes in the accretion-driven disk-wind and Wolf–Rayet-wind configuration of Cygnus X-3.

Background

The paper proposes that the ultrahigh-energy gamma-ray luminosity of Cygnus X-3 is controlled not only by the escaping multi-PeV proton power but also by the circum-binary gas distribution. In particular, a fast disk wind can displace the denser Wolf–Rayet wind from proton trajectories and suppress hadronuclear emission, whereas a weaker, more collimated, or differently oriented disk wind could expose the protons to the Wolf–Rayet wind and increase the PeV flux by roughly two orders of magnitude.

A pure Wolf–Rayet-wind configuration can produce a PeV flux comparable to the much brighter emission reported by several air-shower experiments in the 1980s. However, those historical detections were not confirmed by later searches. Long-term PeV monitoring combined with measurements of the accretion and wind states is therefore needed to determine whether the historical activity was real and whether it was associated with changes in the circum-binary outflow environment.