Related papers: Have Cherenkov telescopes detected a new light bos…
High-energy photons are a powerful probe for astrophysics and for fundamental physics under extreme conditions. During the recent years, our knowledge of the most violent phenomena in the Universe has impressively progressed thanks to the…
The high-energy Universe is potentially a great laboratory for searching new light bosons such as axion-like particles (ALPs). Cosmic sources are indeed the scene of violent phenomena that involve strong magnetic field and/or very long…
Very high energy gamma-rays are expected to be absorbed by the extragalactic background light over cosmological distances via the process of electron-positron pair production. Recent observations of cosmologically distant gamma-ray emitters…
The propagation length of high-energy photons through the Universe is limited by $e^+e^-$ pair production on the extragalactic background radiation. Previous studies reported discrepancies between predicted and observed attenuation,…
Several extensions of the Standard Model predict the existence of Axion-Like Particles (ALPs), very light spin-zero bosons with a two-photon coupling. ALPs can give rise to observable effects in very-high-energy astrophysics. Above roughly…
In addition to its relevant astrophysical and cosmological significance, the Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) is a fundamental source of opacity for cosmic high energy photons, as well as a limitation for the propagation of high-energy…
High energy gamma-ray astronomy is a newly emerging and very successful branch of astronomy and astrophysics. Exciting results have been obtained by the current generation Cherenkov telescope systems such as H.E.S.S., MAGIC, VERITAS and…
We re-derive the possible dependence of the redshift with very high energy (VHE) $\gamma$-ray photon index. The results suggest that the universe to VHE $\gamma$-rays is becoming more transparent than usually expected. We introduce the…
The measurements of the linear polarisation of visible light from quasars give strong evidence for large-scale coherent orientations of their polarisation vectors in some regions of the sky. We show that these observations can be explained…
The axion is just one from a general class of new particles -- called Light Pseudoscalar Bosons (LPBs) -- predicted by many realistic extensions of the Standard Model. We offer a somewhat pedagogical review of their main properties, with…
It is shown that the Sun can become partially transparent to high energy photons in the presence of a pseudo-scalar. In particular, if the axion interpretation of the PVLAS result were true then up to 2% of GeV energy gamma rays might pass…
The expected opacity of the intergalactic space limits the mean free path of TeV gamma rays to dozens of Megaparsecs. However, TeV photons from numerous more distant sources have been detected. This might be interpreted, in each particular…
In the last couple of years the Magic air Cherenkov telescope has made significant contributions to very high energy $\gamma$-ray astronomy. These include the detection of the galactic binary system LSI +61 303 and the observation of pulsed…
Axion-like particles (ALPs) are attracting increasing interest since, among other things, they are a prediction of many extensions of the standard model of elementary particles physics and in particular of superstrings and superbranes.…
The flat-spectrum radio-quasar 3C279 (z=0.536) is the most distant object detected at very high energy (VHE) gamma-rays. It is thus an important beacon for the study of the interaction of the VHE gamma-rays with the Extra-galactic…
Axion-like particles (ALPs) are light, neutral, pseudo-scalar bosons predicted by several extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics -- such as the String Theory -- and are supposed to interact primarily only with two photons. In…
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…
As very high energy (~100 GeV) gamma rays travel over cosmological distances, their flux is attenuated through interactions with the extragalactic background light. Observations of distant gamma ray sources at energies between ~200 GeV and…
The extragalactic background light (EBL) is one of the fundamental observational quantities in cosmology. All energy releases from resolved and unresolved extragalactic sources, and the light from any truly diffuse background, excluding the…
The propagation of $\gamma$ rays over very large distances provides new insights on the intergalactic medium and on fundamental physics. On their path to the Earth, $\gamma$ rays can annihilate with diffuse infrared or optical photons of…