BOW TIES IN THE SKY. I. THE ANGULAR STRUCTURE OF INVERSE COMPTON GAMMA-RAY HALOS IN THE FERMI SKY
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1 (Canada)
- Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, 31 Caroline Street North, Waterloo, ON, N2L 2Y5 (Canada)
- Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg 35, D-69118 Heidelberg (Germany)
- Institute of Astronomy and Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HA (United Kingdom)
- Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1900 E. Kenwood Boulevard, Milwaukee, WI 53211 (United States)
- Theoretical Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
Extended inverse Compton halos are generally anticipated around extragalactic sources of gamma rays with energies above 100 GeV. These result from inverse Compton scattered cosmic microwave background photons by a population of high-energy electron/positron pairs produced by the annihilation of the high-energy gamma rays on the infrared background. Despite the observed attenuation of the high-energy gamma rays, the halo emission has yet to be directly detected. Here, we demonstrate that in most cases these halos are expected to be highly anisotropic, distributing the upscattered gamma rays along axes defined either by the radio jets of the sources or oriented perpendicular to a global magnetic field. We present a pedagogical derivation of the angular structure in the inverse Compton halo and provide an analytic formalism that facilitates the generation of mock images. We discuss exploiting this fact for the purpose of detecting gamma-ray halos in a set of companion papers.
- OSTI ID:
- 22660909
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 832; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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