MODELING THE EXTRAGALACTIC BACKGROUND LIGHT FROM STARS AND DUST

By J. Finke, S. Razzaque, C. Dermer. 2009

426 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The extragalactic background light (EBL) from the far-infrared through the visible and extending into the ultraviolet is thought to be dominated by starlight, either through direct emission or through absorption and reradiation by dust. This is the most important energy range for absorbing γ-rays from distant sources such as blazars and gamma-ray bursts and producing electron–positron pairs. In previous work, we presented EBL models in the optical through ultraviolet by consistently taking into account the star formation rate (SFR), initial mass function (IMF), and dust extinction, and treating stars on the main sequence as blackbodies. This technique is extended to include post-main-sequence stars and reprocessing of starlight by dust. In our simple model, the total energy absorbed by dust is assumed to be re-emitted as three blackbodies in the infrared, one at 40 K representing warm, large dust grains, one at 70 K representing hot, small dust grains, and one at 450 K representing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. We find that our best-fit model combining the Hopkins and Beacom SFR using the Cole et al. parameterization with the Baldry and Glazebrook IMF agrees with available luminosity density data at a variety of redshifts. Our resulting EBL energy density is quite close to the lower limits from galaxy counts, though in two cases below the lower limits, and agrees fairly well with other recent EBL models shortward of about 5 μm. Deabsorbing TeV γ-ray spectra of various blazars with our EBL model gives results consistent with simple shock acceleration theory. We also find that the universe should be optically thin to γ-rays with energies less than 20 GeV.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aa16eda2840d2b0ba7f841f5a79fc6e5d29fd620

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Citations in the corpus

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 ”
Sensitivity of the high altitude water Cherenkov detector to sources of multi-TeV gamma rays (2013, positive): “The large distances to many AGN mean that HAWC data can be used to study the farinfrared component of the EBL [35], secondary gamma-ray production between cosmic-ray sources and Earth [36], and even exotic modes of inter-galactic particle transport such as axions [37].”
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).”
Cosmic X-ray surveys of distant active galaxies (2015, background): “The cosmic UV–optical background is dominated by stellar emission (e.g., Madau 1992; Totani et al 2001; Finke et al 2010) but, prior to the launch of Chandra and XMM-Newton, it was predicted that AGNs may contribute several tens of percent of the CIRB (e.g., Almaini et al 1999; Fabian and Iwasawa…”
Cosmological Magnetic Fields: Their Generation, Evolution and Observation (2013, background): “…the EBL spectrum and its evolution with redshift from models of cosmological evolution of optical and infrared luminosities and and of the luminosity function of galaxies (Stecker et al 2006; Franceschini et al 2008; Kneiske 2008; Domı́nguez et al 2011; Finke et al 2010; Gilmore et al 2012).”
Extreme TeV blazars and the intergalactic magnetic field (2010, result): “…interesting here,0.1 − 15 µm, several of recent EBL estimates converge: the recent models f Franceschini et al. (2008), Gilmore et al. (2009), Finke et al. (2010), Dominguez et al. (2010), agree well (but see Orr et al. 2011) and are consistent with the low level of the EBL suggested by…”
LEPTONIC AND HADRONIC MODELING OF FERMI-DETECTED BLAZARS (2013, methodology): “All our model SEDs are corrected for γ γ absorption by the extragalactic background light using the model of Finke et al. (2010).”
3FHL: The Third Catalog of Hard Fermi-LAT Sources (2017, methodology): “Figure 17shows the HEPs from each source versus redshift together with estimates of the CGRH from EBL models (Finke et al. 2010; Domínguez et al. 2011a; Gilmore et al. 2012).”
The Search for Spatial Extension in High-latitude Sources Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (2018, methodology): “This has been shown in a sensitivity study by Meyer et al. (2016) for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) that also utilized the ELMAG code and compared results for the EBL model of Domínguez et al. (2011) and Finke et al. (2010).”
2FHL: THE SECOND CATALOG OF HARD FERMI-LAT SOURCES (2015, methodology): “The EBL attenuation can be parameterized by an optical depth τ that can be derived from empirical EBL models (e.g., Franceschini et al. 2008; Finke et al. 2010; Kneiske & Dole 2010; Domínguez et al. 2011b; Gilmore et al. 2012; Helgason & Kashlinsky 2012; Stecker et al. 2012; Scully et al. 2014;…”
The extragalactic background light and the gamma-ray opacity of the universe (2012, methodology): “EBL spectra derived from FE evolution models were presented by Dwek et al. (1998), Razzaque et al. (2009), and Finke et al. (2010).”
Detection of a Spectral Break in the Extra Hard Component of GRB 090926A (2011, background): “Absorption by the extragalactic background light (EBL) cannot cause this spectral feature since the opacity at the observed break energy for the redshift of GRB 090926A is very small for practically all EBL models (Finke et al. 2010, and references therein).”
TIME DELAY OF CASCADE RADIATION FOR TeV BLAZARS AND THE MEASUREMENT OF THE INTERGALACTIC MAGNETIC FIELD (2010, methodology): “Here we approximate λγγ (ETeV) ≈ d/τγγ (ETeV) Mpc, using a fit to the Finke et al. (2010) EBL model for 1ES 0229+200.”
BLAZARS AS ULTRA-HIGH-ENERGY COSMIC-RAY SOURCES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TeV GAMMA-RAY OBSERVATIONS (2011, neutral): “8 in Finke et al. 2010).”
Star-forming galaxies as the origin of diffuse high-energy backgrounds: gamma-ray and neutrino connections, and implications for starburst history (2014, result): “[68, 69] for comparison between the EBL model of ref.”
THE COSMIC EVOLUTION OF FERMI BL LACERTAE OBJECTS (2013, methodology): “Fluxes and redshifts were drawn from the observed sample of BL Lacs and EBL absorption was applied using models (Franceschini et al. 2008; Finke et al. 2010; Domı́nguez et al. 2011) in agreement with Fermi observations of the EBL attenuation (Ackermann et al. 2012).”