GeV gamma-ray attenuation and the high-redshift UV background

By R. Gilmore, P. Madau, Joel R. Primack, R. Somerville, F. Haardt. 2009

155 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present new calculations of the evolving UV background out to the epoch of cosmological reionization and make predictions for the amount of GeV gamma-ray attenuation by electron-positron pair production. Our results are based on recent semi-analytic models of galaxy formation, which provide predictions of the dust-extinguished UV radiation field due to starlight, and empirical estimates of the contribution due to quasars. We account for the reprocessing of ionizing photons by the intergalactic medium. We test whether our models can reproduce estimates of the ionizing background at high redshift from flux decrement analysis and proximity effect measurements from quasar spectra, and identify a range of models that can satisfy these constraints. Pair production against soft diffuse photons leads to a spectral cut-off feature for gamma rays observed between 10 and 100 GeV. This cut-off varies with redshift and the assumed star formation and quasar evolution models. We find only negligible amounts of absorption for gamma rays observed below 10 GeV for any emission redshift. With observations of high-redshift sources in sufficient numbers by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and new ground-based instruments, it should be possible to constrain the extragalactic background light in the UV and optical portion of the spectrum.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cf8aa8612da5d3293c00b73a218d5cfcea44b7c0

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. R. Somerville
3. G. Ghisellini
4. F. Tavecchio
5. F. Ryde
6. Joel R. Primack
7. C. Dermer
8. A. Dom'inguez

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. F. Tavecchio
2. Bing Zhang
3. G. Ghisellini
4. C. Dermer
5. Luigi Foschini
6. R. Somerville
7. A. Dom'inguez
8. J. Finke

Citations in the corpus

• Semi-analytic modelling of the extragalactic background light and consequences for extragalactic gamma-ray spectra: Modelling of the EBL and gamma-ray spectra (2012, methodology): “The effect of these processes on the ionizing EBL is the topic of our previous work in Gilmore et al. (2009).”
• Semi-analytic modeling of the EBL and consequences for extragalactic gamma-ray spectra (2011, methodology): “The effect of these processes on the ionizing EBL is the topic of our previous work in Gilmore et al. (2009).”
• ROLE OF LINE-OF-SIGHT COSMIC-RAY INTERACTIONS IN FORMING THE SPECTRA OF DISTANT BLAZARS IN TeV GAMMA RAYS AND HIGH-ENERGY NEUTRINOS (2010, background): “A number of models fall in this range (Salamon & Stecker 1998; Kneiske et al. 2002, 2004; Stecker et al. 2007; Franceschini et al. 2008; Horiuchi et al. 2009; Primack et al. 2009; Gilmore et al. 2009; Razzaque et al. 2009; Finke et al. 2010).”
• Extreme TeV blazars and the intergalactic magnetic field (2010, result): “In the range of wavelength 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…”
• CONTRIBUTION OF GAMMA-RAY-LOUD RADIO GALAXIES’ CORE EMISSIONS TO THE COSMIC MeV AND GeV GAMMA-RAY BACKGROUND RADIATION (2011, background): “These pairs scatter the cosmic microwave background radiation to cause a secondary emission component (the so-called cascade emission) in addition to the absorbed primary emission (Aharonian et al. 1994; Wang et al. 2001; Dai et al. 2002; Razzaque et al. 2004; Ando 2004; Murase et al. 2007; Kneiske ”
• INSIGHTS INTO THE HIGH-ENERGY γ-RAY EMISSION OF MARKARIAN 501 FROM EXTENSIVE MULTIFREQUENCY OBSERVATIONS IN THE FERMI ERA (2011, methodology): “The corrections given by the other low-EBL-level models (Kneiske et al. 2004; Gilmore et al. 2009; Finke et al. 2010) are very similar for the low redshift of Mrk 501 (z = 0.034).”
• 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).”
• MODELING THE EXTRAGALACTIC BACKGROUND LIGHT FROM STARS AND DUST (2009, methodology): “Our model is moderately more opaque than those of Gilmore et al. (2009) and Franceschini et al. (2008) at these redshifts, although it would be difficult to distinguish these models based on γ-ray observations.”
• The intergalactic magnetic field constrained by Fermi/LAT observations of the TeV blazar 1ES 0229+200 (2010, methodology): “In particular, the recent models of Franceschini et al. (2008), Gilmore et al. (2009), Finke et al. (2010) agree well (see e.g. the discussion of Finke et al. 2010) and are consiste t with the low level of the EBL suggested by recent observations f Cherenkov telescopes (e.g. Aharonian et al. 2006,…”
• MAGIC DISCOVERY OF VERY HIGH ENERGY EMISSION FROM THE FSRQ PKS 1222+21 (2011, methodology): “…due to pair-production with low energy photons of the EBL by using different state-of-the-art EBL models, namely the models by Dominguez et al. (2011); Kneiske & Dole (2010); Gilmore et al. (2009); Franceschini et al. (2008) and the “max high UV” EBL model described in Albert et al. (2008a).”