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Gamma--ray emission from individual classical novae

Classical novae are important producers of radioactive nuclei, such as be7, n13, f18, na22 and al26. The disintegration of these nuclei produces positrons (except for be7) that through annihilation with electrons produce photons of energies 511 keV and below. Furthermore, be7 and na22 decay producing photons with energies of 478 keV and 1275 keV, respectively, well in the gamma-ray domain. Therefore, novae are potential sources of gamma-ray emission. The properties of gamma-ray spectra and gamma-ray light curves (for the continuum and for the lines at 511, 478 and 1275 keV) have been analyzed, with a special emphasis on the difference between carbon-oxygen and oxygen-neon novae. Predictions of detectability of individual novae by the future SPI spectrometer on board the INTEGRAL satellite are made.