Fermi Large Area Telescope Constraints on the Gamma-ray Opacity of the Universe

Abstract

The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) includes photons with wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared, which are effective at attenuating gamma rays with energy above ~10 GeV during propagation from sources at cosmological distances. This results in a redshift- and energy-dependent attenuation of the gamma-ray flux of extragalactic sources such as blazars and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). The Large Area Telescope onboard Fermi detects a sample of gamma-ray blazars with redshift up to z~3, and GRBs with redshift up to z~4.3. Using photons above 10 GeV collected by Fermi over more than one year of observations for these sources, we investigate the effect of gamma-ray flux attenuation by the EBL. We place upper limits on the gamma-ray opacity of the Universe at various energies and redshifts, and compare this with predictions from well-known EBL models. We find that an EBL intensity in the optical-ultraviolet wavelengths as great as predicted by the "baseline" model of Stecker et al. (2006) can be ruled out with high confidence.

42 pages, 12 figures, accepted version (24 Aug.2010) for publication in ApJ; Contact authors: A. Bouvier, A. Chen, S. Raino, S. Razzaque, A. Reimer, L.C. Reyes

References in corpus (28)

• Fermi Large Area Telescope First Source Catalog
• Evidence for strong extragalactic magnetic fields from Fermi observations of TeV blazars
• The Spectrum of the Isotropic Diffuse Gamma-Ray Emission Derived From First-Year Fermi Large Area Telescope Data
• CRATES: An All-Sky Survey of Flat-Spectrum Radio Sources
• Very-High-Energy Gamma Rays from a Distant Quasar: How Transparent Is the Universe?
• The First Catalog of Active Galactic Nuclei Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Bright AGN Source List from the First Three Months of the Fermi Large Area Telescope All-Sky Survey
• Roma-BZCAT: A multifrequency catalogue of Blazars
• Fermi Observations of GRB 090510: A Short Hard Gamma-Ray Burst with an Additional, Hard Power-Law Component from 10 keV to GeV Energies
• Gamma-ray Light Curves and Variability of Bright Fermi-Detected Blazars
• Teraelectronvolt Astronomy
• CGRaBS: An All-Sky Survey of Gamma-Ray Blazar Candidates
• New constraints on the Mid-IR EBL from the HESS discovery of VHE gamma rays from 1ES 0229+200
• Spectral Properties of Bright Fermi-detected Blazars in the Gamma-ray Band
• New limits on the density of the extragalactic background light in the optical to the far-infrared from the spectra of all known TeV blazars
• Hints of the existence of Axion-Like-Particles from the gamma-ray spectra of cosmological sources
• Formation of hard VHE gamma-ray spectra of blazars due to internal photon-photon absorption
• Blazar Gamma-Rays, Shock Acceleration, and the Extragalactic Background Light
• Signatures of axion-like particles in the spectra of TeV gamma-ray sources
• PKS 1502+106: a new and distant gamma-ray blazar in outburst discovered by the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Hard TeV spectra of blazars and the constraints to the IR intergalactic background
• The redshift and afterglow of the extremely energetic gamma-ray burst GRB 080916C
• The energy output of the Universe from 0.1 micron to 1000 micron
• The Hard VHE Gamma-ray Emission in High-Redshift TeV Blazars: Comptonization of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation in an Extended Jet?
• The redshift-dependence of gamma-ray absorption in the environments of strong-line AGN
• Detectability of Pair Echos from Gamma-Ray Bursts and Intergalactic Magnetic Fields
• Constraints to Energy Spectra of Blazars based on Recent EBL Limits from Galaxy Counts
• A novel method for measuring the extragalactic background light: Fermi application to the lobes of Fornax A

Cited by in corpus (98)

• The Second Catalog of Active Galactic Nuclei Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Semi-analytic modeling of the EBL and consequences for extragalactic gamma-ray spectra
• The Third Catalog of Active Galactic Nuclei Detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• MAGIC discovery of VHE Emission from the FSRQ PKS 1222+21
• 3FHL: The Third Catalog of Hard Fermi-LAT Sources
• 2FHL: The Second Catalog of Hard Fermi-LAT Sources
• The First Fermi LAT Gamma-Ray Burst Catalog
• The Imprint of The Extragalactic Background Light in the Gamma-Ray Spectra of Blazars
• A decade of Gamma-Ray Bursts observed by $Fermi$-LAT: The 2${}^{nd}$ GRB catalog
• GZK Neutrinos after the Fermi-LAT Diffuse Photon Flux Measurement
• The Cosmic Core-collapse Supernova Rate does not match the Massive-Star Formation Rate
• Measurement of the extragalactic background light imprint on the spectra of the brightest blazars observed with H.E.S.S
• Extragalactic Background Light from Hierarchical Galaxy Formation: Gamma-ray Attenuation up to the Epoch of Cosmic Reionization and the First Stars
• Determination of intergalactic magnetic fields from gamma ray data
• Role of line-of-sight cosmic ray interactions in forming the spectra of distant blazars in TeV gamma rays and high-energy neutrinos
• An observational determination of the evolving extragalactic background light from the multiwavelength HST/CANDELS survey in the Fermi and CTA era
• Gamma Ray Bursts
• Extragalactic propagation of ultrahigh energy cosmic-rays
• Constraints on the Intergalactic Magnetic Field with Gamma-Ray Observations of Blazars
• Very-high-energy gamma-rays from the Universe's middle age: detection of the z=0.940 blazar PKS 1441+25 with MAGIC
• The NuSTAR view on Hard-TeV BL Lacs
• Indirect Searches for Decaying Dark Matter
• Detection of the cosmic γ-ray horizon from multiwavelength observations of blazars
• Can Gamma-Ray Burst Jets Break Out the First Stars?
• Measurement of the Extragalactic Background Light using MAGIC and Fermi-LAT gamma-ray observations of blazars up to z = 1
• PeV neutrinos from intergalactic interactions of cosmic rays emitted by active galactic nuclei
• Components of the Extragalactic Gamma Ray Background
• Probing Dark Matter Decay and Annihilation with Fermi LAT Observations of Nearby Galaxy Clusters
• BL Lacertae objects beyond redshift 1.3 - UV-to-NIR photometry and photometric redshift for Fermi/LAT blazars
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Detection of Bright Gamma-ray Outbursts from a Peculiar Quasar 4C +21.35
• Relativistic Pair Beams from TeV Blazars: A Source of Reprocessed GeV Emission rather than IGM Heating
• High energy electromagnetic cascades in extragalactic space: physics and features
• Transparency of the Universe to gamma rays
• Comparison of Fermi-LAT and CTA in the region between 10-100 GeV
• Gamma-Ray Burst Science in the Era of the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• An Empirical Determination of the Intergalactic Background Light from UV to FIR Wavelengths Using FIR Deep Galaxy Surveys and the Gamma-ray Opacity of the Universe
• Limits on the extragalactic background light in the Fermi era
• New Fermi-LAT event reconstruction reveals more high-energy gamma rays from Gamma-ray bursts
• The Contribution of Blazars to the Extragalactic Diffuse Gamma-ray Background and Their Future Spatial Resolution
• Long-term Monitoring on Mrk 501 for Its VHE gamma Emission and a Flare in October 2011
• VERITAS Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts Detected by Swift
• Reconstructing the γ-ray Photon Optical Depth of the Universe to z~4 from Multiwavelength Galaxy Survey Data
• Modeling the Extragalactic Background Light and the Cosmic Star Formation History
• Can winds driven by active galactic nuclei account for the extragalactic gamma-ray and neutrino backgrounds?
• Models of the Contribution of Blazars to the Anisotropy of the Extragalactic Diffuse Gamma-ray Background
• Lower limits on ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray and jet powers of TeV blazars
• Constraints on the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays from cosmogenic neutrinos and photons
• Cascade photons as test of protons in UHECR
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Observations of the Active Galaxy 4C +55.17: Steady, Hard Gamma-Ray Emission and its Implications
• Prompt X-ray and Optical Excess Emission due to Hadronic Cascades in Gamma-Ray Bursts
• The CTA Sensitivity to Lorentz-Violating Effects on the Gamma-Ray Horizon
• Importance of axion-like particles for very-high-energy astrophysics
• Models for the Spectral Energy Distributions and Variability of Blazars
• The relationship between the radio core-dominance parameter and spectral index in different classes of extragalactic radio sources (II)
• The hadronic origin of hard gamma-ray spectrum from blazar 1ES 1101-232
• Multiwavelength Study of High-Redshift Blazars
• Gamma Ray Bursts
• An Empirical Determination of the Intergalactic Background Light Using NIR Deep Galaxy Survey Data out to 5 microns and the Gamma-ray Opacity of the Universe
• Potential of EBL and cosmology studies with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• New High-z Fermi BL Lacs with the Photometric Dropout Technique
• IACT observations of gamma-ray bursts: prospects for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Inverse Compton Contribution to the Star-Forming Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Background
• Gravitational Lenses as High-Resolution Telescopes
• The estimate of emission region locations of {\it Fermi} FSRQs
• Constraining the near-IR background light from Population-III stars using high redshift gamma-ray sources
• Optical spectroscopy of the gamma-ray bright blazars PKS 0447-439 and PMN J0630-24
• Cosmic Near-infrared Background Tomography with SPHEREx Using Galaxy Cross-correlations
• New high-z BL Lacs using the photometric method with Swift and SARA
• The relationship between the radio core-dominance parameter and spectral index in different classes of extragalactic radio sources (III)
• Probing Intra-Halo Light with Galaxy Stacking in CIBER Images
• Probing the Intergalactic Magnetic Field with the Anisotropy of the Extragalactic Gamma-ray Background
• Strong gravitational lensing as a tool to investigate the structure of jets at high energies
• Studies of active galactic nuclei with CTA
• The isotropic interplanetary dust cloud and near-infrared extragalactic background light observed with COBE/DIRBE
• $Fermi$-LAT detection of a transient $\gamma$-ray source in the direction of a distant blazar B3 1428+422 at $z=4.72$
• Universe opacity and CMB
• How gravitational lensing helps gamma-ray photons avoid $\gamma -\gamma$ absorption
• Very-high-energy gamma-ray emission from high-redshift blazars
• Estimation of the Extragalactic Background Light using TeV Observations of BL~Lacs
• Novel Techniques for Decomposing Diffuse Backgrounds
• Hunting distant BL Lacs with the photometric technique using Swift and SARA
• X-ray and Radio Follow-up Observations of High-Redshift Blazar Candidates in the Fermi-LAT Unassociated Source Population
• The Fermi view of gamma-ray bursts
• Universe opacity and EBL
• Fermi-LAT high $z$ AGN and the Extragalactic Background Light
• Shaping the GeV-spectra of bright blazars
• NuSTAR Observations and multi-wavelength modeling of the high-redshift BL Lac Object 4FGL J2146.5-1344
• Constraining the redshifts of TeV BL Lac objects
• Observational Signatures of Gamma Rays from Bright Blazars and Wakefield Theory
• Diffuse Pionic Gamma-Ray Emission from Large Scale Structures in the FERMI Era
• Multi-wavelength emission from 3C 66A: clues on its redshift and gamma-ray emission location
• On the detection of TeV gamma-rays from GRB with km-cube neutrino telescopes --- I. Muon event rate from single GRBs
• The importance of jet bending in gamma-ray AGN - revisited
• Gamma-Ray Absorption By The Cosmic Lyman Continuum From Star-forming Galaxies
• Is BZB J1450+5201 the most distant $\gamma$-ray BL Lacertae object?
• Constraints on the Optical-IR extragalactic background from gamma-ray absorption studies
• Constraining the Equation of State of Dark Energy with Gamma Rays
• A geomagnetic filter for the Fermi-LAT background