Related papers: Very High Energy gamma-rays from electron/positron…
Blazar emission of gamma rays and cosmic ray production of gamma rays in gas-rich clusters have been proposed recently as alternative sources of the high energy extragalactic diffuse gamma ray background radiation. We show that these…
Here we review our current knowledge on diffuse gamma-rays from galactic halos. Estimates of the relative contribution of the various emission processes at low and high latitudes are compared to the data over 6 decades in energy. The…
We investigate the electron-positron pair cascade taking place in the magnetosphere of a rapidly rotating black hole. Because of the spacetime frame dragging, the Goldreich-Julian charge density changes sign in the vicinity of the event…
The pair-production absorption of high-energy gamma-rays by intergalactic low-energy photons is expected to produce a high-energy cutoff in the spectra of extragalactic sources which is a sensitive function of redshift. We first discuss the…
The propagation of high energy (HE, $E_\gamma>100$ MeV) and very high-energy gamma-rays (VHE, $E_\gamma>100$ GeV) in the extra-galactic photon field leads to pair-production and consequently energy- and distance-dependent attenuation of the…
Very high energy gamma-rays(E>20GeV) from blazars traversing cosmological distances through the metagalactic radiation field can convert to electron-positron pairs in photon-photon collisions. The converted gamma-rays initiate…
We discuss recent models in which neutrinos, which are assumed to have mass in the eV range, originate the highest energy cosmic rays by interaction with the enhanced density in the galactic halo of the relic cosmic neutrino background. We…
Extended inverse Compton halos are generally anticipated around extragalactic sources of gamma rays with energies above 100 GeV. These result from inverse Compton scattered cosmic microwave background photons by a population of high-energy…
We review the physics of the highest energy cosmic rays. The discovery of their sources, still unknown, will reveal the most energetic astrophysical objects in the universe and could unveil new physics beyond the standard model of particle…
Extragalactic background of high energy neutrinos arising from the interactions of cosmic ray protons with far-infrared extragalactic background radiation is calculated. The main assumption is that the cosmic ray spectrum at energies higher…
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…
The all-sky survey in high-energy gamma rays (E$>$30 MeV) carried out by the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET) aboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory provides a unique opportunity to examine in detail the diffuse gamma-ray…
A fundamental question that can be answered in the next decade is: WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE HIGHEST ENERGY COSMIC PARTICLES? The discovery of the sources of the highest energy cosmic rays will reveal the workings of the most energetic…
We explore novel classes of exotic astrophysical sources capable of producing ultra-high-energy gamma rays extending beyond the PeV scale, motivated by quantum gravity scenarios and dark matter phenomenology. These sources include:…
Very high energy {\gamma}-rays are one of the most important messengers of the non-thermal Universe. The major motivation of very high energy {\gamma}-ray astronomy is to find sources of high energy cosmic rays. Several astrophysical…
Very high energy (VHE) gamma-rays undergo pair production with low energy photons of background radiation fields. This leads to an attenuation of the primary gamma-ray flux of extragalactic sources in the interaction with the extragalactic…
We explore scenarios where the highest energy cosmic rays (HECR) are produced by new particle physics near the grand unification scale. Using detailed numerical simulations of extragalactic cosmic and gamma-ray propagation, we show the…
Bright gamma-ray flares observed from sources far beyond our Galaxy are best explained if enormous amounts of energy are liberated by black holes. The highest-energy particles in nature--the ultra-high energy cosmic rays--cannot be confined…
The presence of gaseous X-ray halos around massive galaxies is a basic prediction of all past and modern structure formation simulations. The importance of these X-ray halos is further emphasized by the fact that they retain signatures of…
Sources of high-energy photons have important applications in almost all areas of research. However, the photon flux and intensity of existing sources is strongly limited for photon energies above a few hundred keV. Here we show that a…