Very-high-energy gamma-ray emission from high-redshift blazars

Abstract

We study the possible detection of and properties of very high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission (in the energy band above 100 GeV) from high redshift sources. We report on the detection of VHE gamma-ray flux from blazars with redshifts z>0.5. We use the data of Fermi telescope in the energy band above 100 GeV and identify significant sources via cross-correlation of arrival directions of individual VHE gamma-rays with the positions of known Fermi sources. There are thirteen high-redshift sources detected in the VHE band by Fermi/LAT telescope. The present statistics of the Fermi signal from these sources is too low for a sensible study of the effects of suppression of the VHE flux by pair production through interactions with Extragalactic Background Light photons. We find that the detection of these sources with ground-based gamma-ray telescopes would be challenging. However, several sources including BL Lacs PKS 0426-380 at z=1.11, KUV 00311-1938 at z=0.61, B3 1307+433 at z=0.69, PG 1246+586 at z=0.84, Ton 116 at z=1.065 as well as a flat-spectrum radio quasar 4C +55.17 at z=0.89 should be detectable by HESS-II, MAGIC-II and CTA. A high-statistics study of a much larger number of VHE gamma-ray sources at cosmological distances would be possible with the proposed high-altitude Cherenkov telescope 5@5.

10 pages, 14 figures

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• F-GAMMA: Multi-frequency radio monitoring of Fermi blazars. The 2.64 to 43 GHz Effelsberg light curves from 2007-2015
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Detection of Two Very-High-Energy (E>100 GeV) Gamma-ray Photons from the z = 1.1 Blazar PKS 0426-380
• High-energy emitting BL Lacs and high-energy neutrinos - Prospects for the direct association with IceCube and KM3NeT
• Peak of spectral energy distribution play an important role in intra-day variability of Blazars?
• A self-consistent interpretation of the GeV-TeV emission from a distant blazar PKS 1424+240
• Fermi-LAT high $z$ AGN and the Extragalactic Background Light
• Search for Very-High-Energy Gamma Rays from the z = 0.896 Quasar 4C +55.17 with the MAGIC telescopes
• Intergalactic magnetic field lower limits up to the redshift $z\approx 3$
• Detection of new very-high-energy sources outside the galactic plane in the Fermi-LAT data