A correlation between hard gamma-ray sources and cosmic voids along the line of sight

Furniss, A.; Sutter, P. M.; Primack, J. R.; Dominguez, A.

doi:10.1093/mnras/stu2196

Title: A correlation between hard gamma-ray sources and cosmic voids along the line of sight

Journal Article · Tue Nov 25 00:00:00 EST 2014 · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stu2196· OSTI ID:1167126

Furniss, A. ^[1]; Sutter, P. M. ^[2]; Primack, J. R. ^[3]; Dominguez, A. ^[4]

Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States)
Sorbonne Univ., Paris (France); Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Paris (France); Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States)
Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, CA (United States)
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA (United States)

We estimate the galaxy density along lines of sight to hard extragalactic gamma-ray sources by correlating source positions on the sky with a void catalog based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Extragalactic gamma-ray sources that are detected at very high energy (VHE; E > 100 GeV) or have been highlighted as VHE-emitting candidates in the Fermi Large Area Telescope hard source catalog (together referred to as “VHE-like” sources) are distributed along underdense lines of sight at the 2.4σ level. There is a less suggestive correlation for the Fermi hard source population (1.7σ). A correlation between 10-500 GeV flux and underdense fraction along the line of sight for VHE-like and Fermi hard sources is found at 2.4σ and 2.6σ, calculated from the Pearson correlation coefficients of r = 0.57 and 0.47, respectively. The preference for underdense sight lines is not displayed by gamma-ray emitting galaxies within the second Fermi catalog, containing sources detected above 100 MeV, or the SDSS DR7 quasar catalog. We investigate whether this marginal correlation might be a result of lower extragalactic background light (EBL) photon density within the underdense regions and find that, even in the most extreme case of a entirely underdense sight line, the EBL photon density is only 2% less than the nominal EBL density. Translating this into gamma-ray attenuation along the line of sight for a highly attenuated source with opacity τ(E, z) ~ 5, we estimate that the attentuation of gamma-rays decreases no more than 10%. This decrease, although non-neglible, is unable to account for the apparent hard source correlation with underdense lines of sight.

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

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-76SF00515

OSTI ID:: 1167126

Report Number(s):: SLAC-PUB-16187; arXiv:1407.6370

Journal Information:: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 446, Issue 3; ISSN 0035-8711

Publisher:: Royal Astronomical SocietyCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 16 works

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Title: A correlation between hard gamma-ray sources and cosmic voids along the line of sight

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