Aims: Observations of Kepler’s supernova remnant (G4.5+6.8) with the HESS telescope array in 2004 and 2005 with a total live time of 13 h are presented.
Methods: Stereoscopic imaging of Cherenkov radiation from extensive air showers is used to reconstruct the energy and direction of the incident gamma rays.
Results: No evidence for a very high energy (VHE: >100 GeV) gamma-ray signal from the direction of the remnant is found. An upper limit (99% confidence level) on the energy flux in the range 230 GeV–12.8 TeV of 8.6 × 10-13 erg cm-2 s-1 is obtained.
Conclusions: In the context of an existing theoretical model for the remnant, the lack of a detectable gamma-ray flux implies a distance of at least 6.4 kpc. A corresponding upper limit for the density of the ambient matter of 0.7 cm-3 is derived. With this distance limit, and assuming a spectral index Γ = 2, the total energy in accelerated protons is limited to Ep < 8.6 × 1049 erg. In the synchrotron/inverse Compton framework, extrapolating the power law measured by RXTE between 10 and 20 keV down in energy, the predicted gamma-ray flux from inverse Compton scattering is below the measured upper limit for magnetic field values greater than 52 μG.
