Detecting the Attenuation of Blazar Gamma-ray Emission by Extragalactic Background Light with GLAST

Abstract

Gamma rays with energy above 10 GeV interact with optical-UV photons resulting in pair production. Therefore, a large sample of high redshift sources of these gamma rays can be used to probe the extragalactic background starlight (EBL) by examining the redshift dependence of the attenuation of the flux above 10 GeV. GLAST, the next generation high-energy gamma-ray telescope, will have the unique capability to detect thousands of gamma-ray blazars to redshifts of at least z=4, with sufficient angular resolution to allow identification of a large fraction of their optical counterparts. By combining established models of the gamma-ray blazar luminosity function, two different calculations of the high energy gamma-ray opacity due to EBL absorption, and the expected GLAST instrument performance to produce simulated fluxes and redshifts for the blazars that GLAST would detect, we demonstrate that these gamma-ray blazars have the potential to be a highly effective probe of the optical-UV EBL.

arXiv comment15 pages, AASTeX, 3 eps figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

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• GeV Gamma-Ray Attenuation and the High-Redshift UV Background
• Absorption of 10--200 Gev Gamma Rays by Radiation from BLR in Blazars
• The spectrum of the Broad Line Region and the high-energy emission of powerful blazars
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Constraints on the Gamma-ray Opacity of the Universe
• Constraints on the Intergalactic Magnetic Field with Gamma-Ray Observations of Blazars
• The redshift-dependence of gamma-ray absorption in the environments of strong-line AGN
• Possible Evidence for Lorentz Invariance Violation in Gamma-ray Burst 221009A
• Contribution to the Extragalactic Gamma-ray Background from the Cascades of Very-high Energy Gamma Rays from Blazars
• The Signature of Large Scale Structures on the Very High Energy Gamma-Ray Sky
• Absorption of 10 Gev--1 Tev Gamma Rays by Radiation from Broad-Line Region in 3C 279
• The Spectral Energy Distribution of the High-Z Blazar Q0906+693
• The Extragalactic Background Light Absorption Feature in the Blazar Component of the Extragalactic Gamma-ray Background
• Absorption of 10 Gev--1 Tev Gamma Rays from 3C 279
• Searching for an EBL attenuation signature in the Fermi/LAT 1st year catalog data
• Modeling the flaring activity of the high z, hard X-ray selected blazar IGR J22517+2217
• GLAST Large Area Telescope Multiwavelength Planning