Physics of cosmological cascades and observable properties

Abstract

TeV photons from extragalactic sources are absorbed in the intergalactic medium and initiate electromagnetic cascades. These cascades offer a unique tool to probe the properties of the universe at cosmological scales. We present a new Monte Carlo code dedicated to the physics of such cascades. This code has been tested against both published results and analytical approximations, and is made publicly available. Using this numerical tool, we investigate the main cascade properties (spectrum, halo extension, time delays), and study in detail their dependence on the physical parameters (extra-galactic magnetic field, extra-galactic background light, source redshift, source spectrum and beaming emission). The limitations of analytical solutions are emphasised. In particular, analytical approximations account only for the first generation of photons and higher branches of the cascade tree are neglected.

18 pages, 21 figures, Accepted by MNRAS; this preprint matches accepted version

References in corpus (8)

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Massive Argon Space Telescope (MAST): a concept of heavy time projection chamber for gamma-ray astronomy in the 100 MeV --- 1 TeV energy range
• Properties of the Intergalactic Magnetic Field Constrained by Gamma-ray Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Cascaded Gamma-ray Emission Associated with the KM3NeT Ultra-High-Energy Event KM3-230213A
• Characterising the signatures of star-forming galaxies in the extra-galactic $\gamma$-ray background