Gamma-ray emission from halos of stars and OB associations
While gamma-ray emission produced by Galactic CR electrons and positrons via inverse Compton (IC) scattering on a large-scale smooth interstellar radiation field was observed already in the EGRET era, only in 2006 did she theorized that this IC emission could be clumpy close by stars. Indeed, a large part of the Galactic luminosity comes from the most luminous stars, which are rare. Therefore, she expected the ISRF, and hence the IC emission, to be clumpy around the most luminous stars. She produced spatial and spectral models of the IC emission for different classes of individual stars.
She found that even individual luminous stars can contribute to the clumpiness of the emission, and that some of the most luminous stars could be observed by Fermi LAT. A list of the closest and luminous stars producing a flux higher than the the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) sensitivity was released. Moreover, apart from single stars, she found that even OB associations could be detected by Fermi LAT. For example, she made a spectral and spatial model for the Cygnus OB2 region, accounting from its stellar type contents and density distribution. The estimated IC emission is comparable to the total IC emission from the Cygnus region and the extragalactic background. Since this contribution was found to be significant, it was accounted in the Cygnus OB2 discovery of fresh accelerated cosmic rays, which she was part of.
Further and more precise analyses are still ongoing within the Fermi-LAT collaboration.