Related papers: Cascading on extragalactic background light
Recent observations of blazars at high energy (HE, 0.1-100 GeV) and very high energy (VHE, >0.1 TeV) have provided important constraints on the intensity and spectrum of the diffuse Extragalactic Background Light (EBL), shedding light on…
Ultra-high energy cosmic ray protons accelerated in astrophysical objects produce secondary electromagnetic cascades during propagation in the cosmic microwave and infrared backgrounds. We show that such cascades can contribute between ~1%…
TeV emission from blazars can be used to probe the intergalactic magnetic fields and measure their intensity, coherence length, and helicity. Intergalactic magnetic fields deflect the electron-positron pairs produced by very-high-energy…
The energy spectra of TeV gamma-rays from blazars, after being corrected for intergalatic absorption in the Extragalactic Background Light (EBL), appear unusually hard, a fact that poses challenges to the conventional models of particle…
Recent progress in very high energy (VHE, E >100 GeV) $\gamma$-ray observations, together with advances in the extragalactic background light (EBL) modelling, allows to search for new phenomena such as $\gamma$-axion-like particle ($\gamma…
High energy gamma-ray emission from two nearby bright starburst galaxies, M82 and NGC 253, have recently been detected by Fermi, H.E.S.S., and VERITAS. Since starburst galaxies have a high star formation rate and plenty of dust in the…
Recent claims that the strength B_IGMF of the intergalactic magnetic field (IGMF) is >~ 1e-15 G are based on upper limits to the expected cascade flux in the GeV band produced by blazar TeV photons absorbed by the extragalactic background…
Blazars are among the most powerful accelerators and are expected to produce a bright TeV $\gamma$-ray flux. However, TeV $\gamma$-rays are attenuated by interactions with intergalactic radiation before reaching Earth. These interactions…
Beams of ultra-relativistic electrons in blazar jets develop pair cascades interacting with ambient soft photons. Employing coupled kinetic equations with escape terms, we model the unsaturated pair cascade spectrum. We assume that the…
For distant extragalactic sources of gamma-rays in the PeV energy range, interactions of the gamma rays with intergalactic diffuse radiation fields will initiate a pair cascade. Depending on the magnetic fields in the vicinity of the…
It is well known that the effect of gamma-ray absorption on extragalactic background light (EBL) is weakly expressed in the spectra of some blazars. It is shown that a secondary component generated by electromagnetic cascades might…
The very high energy (VHE) gamma ray spectral index of high energy peaked blazars correlates strongly with its corresponding redshift whereas no such correlation is observed in the X-ray or the GeV bands. We attribute this correlation to a…
Intergalactic space is believed to contain non-zero magnetic fields (the Intergalactic Magnetic Field: IGMF) which at scales of Mpc would have intensities below $10^{-9}$ G. Very high energy (VHE $>$100 GeV) gamma rays coming from blazars…
The observed spectra of blazars, their intrinsic emission, and the underlying populations of radiating particles are intimately related. The use of these sources as probes of the extragalactic infrared background, a prospect propelled by…
Recent blazar detections by HESS, MAGIC, and VERITAS suggest that very-high-energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) gamma-rays may be produced in most, if not all, types of blazars, including those that possess intense circumnuclear radiation fields. In…
TeV photons from blazars at relatively large distances, interacting with the optical-IR cosmic background, are efficiently converted into electron-positron pairs. The produced pairs are extremely relativistic (Lorentz factors of the order…
We discuss the problem of the absorption of very high-energy gamma-rays by pair production interactions with extragalactic photons which originate from stellar emission in the near IR-UV and reradiation of starlight in the mid- and far-IR.…
Relativistic pair beams produced in the intergalactic medium (IGM) by TeV gamma rays from blazars are expected to generate a detectable GeV-scale electromagnetic cascade, yet this cascade is absent in the observed spectra of hard-spectrum…
Most blazars are known to be hosted in giant elliptic galaxies, but their cluster environments have not been thoroughly investigated. Cluster environments may contain radiation fields of low-energy photons created by nearby galaxies and/or…
Very high energy (VHE) gamma-rays from extragalactic sources, interacting by gamma-gamma collisions with diffuse intergalactic radiation fields, provide an alternative way to constrain the diffuse background light, completely independent of…