Probing stochastic inter-galactic magnetic fields using blazar-induced gamma ray halo morphology
Abstract
Inter-galactic magnetic fields can imprint their structure on the morphology of blazar-induced gamma ray halos. We show that the halo morphology arises through the interplay of the source's jet and a two-dimensional surface dictated by the magnetic field. Through extensive numerical simulations, we generate mock halos created by stochastic magnetic fields with and without helicity, and study the dependence of the halo features on the properties of the magnetic field. We propose a sharper version of the Q-statistics and demonstrate its sensitivity to the magnetic field strength, the coherence scale, and the handedness of the helicity. We also identify and explain a new feature of the Q-statistics that can further enhance its power.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1701.01501,
title = {Probing stochastic inter-galactic magnetic fields using blazar-induced gamma ray halo morphology},
author = {Francis Duplessis and Tanmay Vachaspati},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.01501},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
v2: 23 pages, 17 figures. This version has an improved analysis of the electromagnetic cascade and matches the version published in JCAP