The stellar contribution to the extra-galactic background light and absorption of high-energy gamma-rays

Abstract

TeV gamma rays from distant astrophysical sources are attenuated due to electron-positron pair creation by interacting with ultraviolet/optical to infrared photons which fill the universe and are collectively known as the extra-galactic background light (EBL). We model the ~0.1-10 eV starlight component of the EBL derived from expressions for the stellar initial mass function, star formation history of the universe, and wavelength-dependent absorption of a large sample of galaxies in the local universe. These models are simultaneously fitted to the EBL data as well as to the data on the stellar luminosity density in our local universe. We find that the models with modified Salpeter A initial mass function together with Cole et al. (2001) or Hopkins and Beacom (2006) star formation history best represent available data. Since no dust emission is included, our calculated EBL models can be interpreted as the lower limits in the ~0.1-1 eV range. We present simple analytic fits to the best-fit EBL model evolving with redshift. We then proceed to calculate gamma-ray opacities, and absorption of ~10-300 GeV gamma-rays coming from different redshifts. We discuss implications of our results for the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope and ground-based Air Cherenkov Telescopes.

30 pages, 11 figures and 1 table. Substantially revised but the formalism remains unchanged. Accepted in ApJ

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