Intergalactic Photon Spectra from the Far-IR to the UV Lyman Limit for 0 < z < 6 and the Optical Depth of the Universe to High-Energy Gamma Rays

By Floyd W. Stecker, M. Malkan, S. Scully. 2005

353 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We calculate the intergalactic photon density as a function of both energy and redshift for 0 < z < 6 for photon energies from.003 eV to the Lyman limit cutoff at 13.6 eV in a ΛCDM universe with ΩΛ = 0.7 and Ωm = 0.3. The basic features of our backward-evolution model for galaxies were developed in earlier papers by Malkan & Stecker. With a few improvements, we find that this evolutionary model gives predictions of new deep number counts from Spitzer, as well as a calculation of the spectral energy distribution of the diffuse infrared background, which are in good agreement with the data. We then use our calculated intergalactic photon densities to extend previous work on the absorption of high-energy γ-rays in intergalactic space owing to interactions with low-energy photons and the 2.7 K cosmic microwave background radiation. We calculate the optical depth of the universe, τ, for γ-rays having energies from 4 GeV to 100 TeV emitted by sources at redshifts from 0 to 5. We also give an analytic fit with numerical coefficients for approximating τ(Eγ, z). As an example of the application of our results, we calculate the absorbed spectrum of the blazar PKS 2155-304 at z = 0.117 and compare it with the spectrum observed by the HESS air Cerenkov γ-ray telescope array.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/17f9de62d64089d1f8eb7fe79262bfa4b5535229

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Citations in the corpus

THE LUMINOSITY FUNCTION OF FERMI-DETECTED FLAT-SPECTRUM RADIO QUASARS (2011, methodology): “The ﬁt is performed only for E < 20 GeV to avoid possible steeping due to the absorption of γ -ray photons by the EBL (e.g., Stecker et al. 2006; Franceschini et al. 2008).”
THE LARGE AREA TELESCOPE ON THE FERMI GAMMA-RAY SPACE TELESCOPE MISSION (2009, methodology): “According to current EBL models (e.g., Primack et al. 1999; Stecker et al. 2006; Kneiske et al. 2004), absorption breaks in the LAT energy range are expected for sources located atz ≥ 0.5.”
Extragalactic optical-infrared background radiation, its time evolution and the cosmic photon-photon opacity (2008, neutral): “4, although sharing similar behavior, also show significant quantitative differences to those reported by Stecker et al. (2006) and Stanev et al. (2006).”
Cosmogenic neutrinos: parameter space and detectabilty from PeV to ZeV (2010, methodology): “One can notice that Kneiske et al. (2004) find higher photon densities in the far infrared bump at large redshift compared to Stecker et al. (2006), and lower densities in the optical and UV range.”
MODELING THE EXTRAGALACTIC BACKGROUND LIGHT FROM STARS AND DUST (2009, methodology): “One class of models approaches the problem by using justin.finke@nrl.navy.mil IR data from local galaxies and extrapolating their evolution to higher redshifts and shorter wavelengths (e.g., Malkan & Stecker 1998, 2001; Stecker et al. 2006).”
Electron-positron pairs in physics and astrophysics: from heavy nuclei to black holes (2009, methodology): “This calculation was applied to further study of the optical depth of the Universe to high-energy γ-rays [291–293].”
FERMI OBSERVATIONS OF GRB 090510: A SHORT–HARD GAMMA-RAY BURST WITH AN ADDITIONAL, HARD POWER-LAW COMPONENT FROM 10 keV TO GeV ENERGIES (2010, methodology): “We have included curves for the two models of Stecker et al. (2006) as well as the fiducial model of Gilmore et al. (2009), the best fit model of Kneiske et al. (2004), the model by Franceschini et al. (2008), and “Model C” of Finke et al. (2009).”
Variable Very High Energy γ-Ray Emission from Markarian 501 (2007, methodology): “A correction using the EBL models Aharonian et al. (2006) and and Primack et al. (2005) gave very similar results, while using Kneiske et al. (2004: ’Best’) and Stecker et al. (2006,2007) gave slightly larger energy fluxes above 1 TeV14.”
CONTRIBUTION OF GAMMA-RAY-LOUD RADIO GALAXIES’ CORE EMISSIONS TO THE COSMIC MeV AND GeV GAMMA-RAY BACKGROUND RADIATION (2011, background): “Here ω(Fγ [Lγ , z]) is the detection efficiency of Fermi at the photon flux Fγ , which corresponds to the flux from a source with a gamma-ray luminosity Lγ at redshift z. High-energy γ -rays ( 20 GeV) propagating through the universe are absorbed by the interaction with the extragalactic background ”
GeV gamma-ray attenuation and the high-redshift UV background (2009, methodology): “The most recent models of Stecker and collaborators (Stecker et al. 2006, 2007) are based on a ‘backwards evolution’ model in which galaxies’ emission SEDs are determined by their brightness in one band, taken to be 60 µm.”
THE EXTRAGALACTIC BACKGROUND LIGHT, THE HUBBLE CONSTANT, AND ANOMALIES: CONCLUSIONS FROM 20 YEARS OF TeV GAMMA-RAY OBSERVATIONS (2015, methodology): “…obtained with a null EBL, the best-fit eightpoint EBL spectrum, and the models of Gilmore et al. (2012) (G12), Franceschini et al. (2008) (F08), Domínguez et al. (2011b) (D11), Stecker et al. (2006) (S06) Khaire & Srianand (2015) (KS14), Finke et al. (2010) (F10), and Kneiske & Dole (2010) (KD10).”
New limits on the density of the extragalactic background light in the optical to the far-infrared from the spectra of all known TeV blazars (2007, background): “15 the limits derived in this paper are shown in comparison to predictions from EBL models by Kneiske et al. (2002), Stecker et al. (2006), and Primack et al. (2005) (atz = 0).”
The Astrophysics of Ultrahigh-Energy Cosmic Rays (2011, background): “Dashed lines represent the interaction length (or mean free path to interaction) for photo-pion production on CMB photons (thick) and IR-UV photons (thin), assuming the background of Stecker et al. (2006).”