Deriving the Contribution of Blazars to the Fermi-LAT Extragalactic γ-ray Background at E > 10 GeV with Efficiency Corrections and Photon Statistics

Di Mauro, M.; Manconi, S.; Zechlin, H. -S.; Ajello, M.; Charles, E.; Donato, F.

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aab3e5

Title: Deriving the Contribution of Blazars to the Fermi-LAT Extragalactic γ-ray Background at E > 10 GeV with Efficiency Corrections and Photon Statistics

Journal Article · Thu Mar 29 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aab3e5· OSTI ID:1436087

Di Mauro, M. ^[1]; Manconi, S. ^[2];

^[3];

^[4];

^[1];

Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States)
Univ. of Torino, Torino (Italy); Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Torino (Italy)
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Torino (Italy)
Clemson Univ., Clemson, SC (United States)

Here, the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) Collaboration has recently released the Third Catalog of Hard Fermi-LAT Sources (3FHL), which contains 1556 sources detected above 10 GeV with seven years of Pass 8 data. Building upon the 3FHL results, we investigate the flux distribution of sources at high Galactic latitudes ($$|b| \gt 20^\circ $$), which are mostly blazars. We use two complementary techniques: (1) a source-detection efficiency correction method and (2) an analysis of pixel photon count statistics with the one-point probability distribution function (1pPDF). With the first method, using realistic Monte Carlo simulations of the γ-ray sky, we calculate the efficiency of the LAT to detect point sources. This enables us to find the intrinsic source-count distribution at photon fluxes down to 7.5 × 10^–12 ph cm^–2 s^–1. With this method, we detect a flux break at (3.5 ± 0.4) × 10^–11 ph cm^–2 s^–1 with a significance of at least 5.4σ. The power-law indexes of the source-count distribution above and below the break are 2.09 ± 0.04 and 1.07 ± 0.27, respectively. This result is confirmed with the 1pPDF method, which has a sensitivity reach of ~10^–11 ph cm^–2 s^–1. Integrating the derived source-count distribution above the sensitivity of our analysis, we find that (42 ± 8)% of the extragalactic γ-ray background originates from blazars.

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Research Organization:: SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-76SF00515

OSTI ID:: 1436087

Journal Information:: The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 856, Issue 2; ISSN 1538-4357

Publisher:: Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 24 works

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