Stephanie Haeffner, Christian Stegmann, Ira Jung-Richardt

• Supernova remnants accelerate particles up to energies of at least 100 TeV as established by observations in very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. Molecular clouds in their vicinity provide an increased amount of target material for proton-proton interaction and subsequent neutral pion decay into gamma-rays of accelerated hadrons escaping the remnant. Therefore, these molecular clouds are potential gamma-ray sources. The gamma-ray emission from these clouds provides a unique environment to derive information on the propagation of very-high-nergy particles through the interstellar medium as well as on the acceleration of hadrons in supernova remnants. Current Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope systems are suitable to explore a large parameter space of the propagation properties depending on the age of the supernova remnant and the distance between the remnant and the nearby molecular cloud. In this paper we present our strategy and results of a systematic search for gamma-ray emitting molecular clouds near supernova remnantsSupernova remnants accelerate particles up to energies of at least 100 TeV as established by observations in very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. Molecular clouds in their vicinity provide an increased amount of target material for proton-proton interaction and subsequent neutral pion decay into gamma-rays of accelerated hadrons escaping the remnant. Therefore, these molecular clouds are potential gamma-ray sources. The gamma-ray emission from these clouds provides a unique environment to derive information on the propagation of very-high-nergy particles through the interstellar medium as well as on the acceleration of hadrons in supernova remnants. Current Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope systems are suitable to explore a large parameter space of the propagation properties depending on the age of the supernova remnant and the distance between the remnant and the nearby molecular cloud. In this paper we present our strategy and results of a systematic search for gamma-ray emitting molecular clouds near supernova remnants which are potentially detectable with current experiments in the TeV energy range and explore the prospects of future experiments.…