Detection of the cosmic γ-ray horizon from multiwavelength observations of blazars
- Univ. of California, Riverside, CA (United States)
- U.S. Naval Research Lab., Washington, DC (United States)
- Campus of International Excellence UAM_CSIC, Madrid (Spain); Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain); Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Granada (Spain)
- Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, CA (United States)
- Leibniz-Institut fuer Astrophysik, Potsdam (Germany)
- Univ. Of California, Riverside, CA (United States)
- Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States). Kavli Inst. sor Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology; Max-Planck-Institut fuer Physik, Munich (Germany)
The first statistically significant detection of the cosmic γ-ray horizon (CGRH) that is independent of any extragalactic background light (EBL) model is presented. The CGRH is a fundamental quantity in cosmology. It gives an estimate of the opacity of the Universe to very high energy (VHE) γ-ray photons due to photon-photon pair production with the EBL. The only estimations of the CGRH to date are predictions from EBL models and lower limits from γ-ray observations of cosmological blazars and γ-ray bursts. Here, we present homogeneous synchrotron/synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) models of the spectral energy distributions of 15 blazars based on (almost) simultaneous observations from radio up to the highest energy γ-rays taken with the Fermi satellite. These synchrotron/SSC models predict the unattenuated VHE fluxes, which are compared with the observations by imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. The comparison provides an estimate of the optical depth of the EBL, which allows a derivation of the CGRH through a maximum likelihood analysis that is EBL-model independent. We find that the observed CGRH is compatible with the current knowledge of the EBL.
- Research Organization:
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 1169459
- Report Number(s):
- SLAC-PUB-16225; arXiv:1305.2162
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 770, Issue 1; ISSN 0004-637X
- Publisher:
- Institute of Physics (IOP)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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