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Register a new userAngular Anisotropies in the Cosmic Gamma-ray Background as a Probe of its Origin
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Francesco Miniati
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Notwithstanding the advent of the Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope, theoretical models predict that a significant fraction of the cosmic gamma-ray background (CGB), at the level of 20% of the currently measured value, will remain unresolved. The angular power spectrum of intensity fluctuations of the CGB contains information on its origin. We show that probing the latter from a few tens of arcmin to several degree scales, together with complementary GLAST observations of gamma-ray emission from galaxy clusters and the blazars luminosity function, can discriminate between a background that originates from unresolved blazars or cosmic rays accelerated at structure formation shocks.
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The measured cosmic gamma ray background (CGB) spectrum at MeV energies is in reasonable agreement with the predicted contribution from type Ia supernovae (SNIa). But the characteristic features in the SNIa gamma ray spectrum, weakened by integration over source redshifts, are hard to measure, and additionally the contributions from other sources in the MeV range are uncertain, so that the SNIa origin of the MeV CGB remains unproven. Since different CGB sources have different clustering properties and redshift distributions, by combining the CGB spectrum and angular correlation measurements, the contributions to the CGB could be identified and separated. The SNIa CGB large-scale structure follows that of galaxies. Its rms fluctuation at degree scales has a characteristic energy dependence, ranging from $sim 1%$ to order of unity and can be measured to several percent precision by proposed future satellites such as the Advanced Compton Telescope. With the identification of the SNIa contribution, the SNIa rate could be measured unambiguously as a function of redshift up to $z sim 1$, by combining both the spectrum and angular correlation measurements, yielding new constraints on the star formation rate to even higher redshifts. Finally, we show that the gamma ray and neutrino backgrounds from supernovae should be closely connected, allowing an important consistency test from the measured data. Identification of the astrophysical contributions to the CGB would allow much greater sensitivity to an isotropic high-redshift CGB contribution arising in extra dimension or dark matter models.
Suggestions have been made that the microwave background observed by COBE and WMAP and dubbed Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) may have an origin within our own Galaxy or Earth. To consider the signal that may be correlated with Earth, a correlate-by-eye exercise was attempted by overlaying the CMB map from Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe on a topographical map of Earth. Remarkably, several hot spots in the CMB map are found to be well aligned with either large cities on Earth or regions of high altitude. To further study the correlations between Earth and CMB, we performed a complicated cross-correlation analysis in the multipole space. The overall correlations are detected at more than 5 sigma confidence level. These results can be naively interpreted to suggest that large angular scale fluctuations in CMB are generated on Earth by a process that traces the altitude relative to a mean radius. Simply extending our analysis, we suggest that cross-correlations between CMB and any other map of a Solar system body, image of a person, or an image of an animal will be detected at some statistical significance. It is unclear how Occams razor can be applied in such a situation to identify which sources are responsible for CMB fluctuations.
Recently, a new measurement of the auto- and cross-correlation angular power spectrum (APS) of the isotropic gamma-ray background was performed, based on 81 months of data of the Fermi Large-Area Telescope (LAT). Here, we fit, for the first time, the new APS data with a model describing the emission of unresolved blazars. These sources are expected to dominate the anisotropy signal. The model we employ in our analysis reproduces well the blazars resolved by Fermi LAT. When considering the APS obtained by masking the sources in the 3FGL catalogue, we find that unresolved blazars under-produce the measured APS below $sim$1 GeV. Contrary to past results, this suggests the presence of a new contribution to the low-energy APS, with a significance of, at least, 5$sigma$. The excess can be ascribed to a new class of faint gamma-ray emitters. If we consider the APS obtained by masking the sources in the 2FGL catalogue, there is no under-production of the APS below 1 GeV, but the new source class is still preferred over the blazars-only scenario (with a significance larger than 10$sigma$). The properties of the new source class and the level of anisotropies induced in the isotropic gamma-ray background are the same, independent of the APS data used. In particular, the new gamma-ray emitters must have a soft energy spectrum, with a spectral index ranging, approximately, from 2.7 to 3.2. This complicates their interpretation in terms of known sources, since, normally, star-forming and radio galaxies are observed with a harder spectrum. The new source class identified here is also expected to contribute significantly to the intensity of the isotropic gamma-ray background.
The 21-cm anisotropies from the neutral hydrogen distribution prior to the era of reionization is a sensitive probe of primordial non-Gaussianity. Unlike the case with cosmic microwave background, 21-cm anisotropies provide multi-redshift information with frequency selection and is not damped at arcminute angular scales. We discuss the angular trispectrum of the 21-cm background anisotropies and discuss how the trispectrum signal generated by the primordial non-Gaussianity can be measured with the three-to-one correlator and the corresponding angular power spectrum. We also discuss the separation of primordial non-Gaussian information in the trispectrum with that generated by the subsequent non-linear gravitational evolution of the density field. While with the angular bispectrum of 21-cm anisotropies one can limit the second order corrections to the primordial fluctuations below f_NL< 1, using the trispectrum information we suggest that the third order coupling term, f_2 or g_NL, can be constrained to be arounde 10 with future 21-cm observations over the redshift interval of 50 to 100.
The angular power spectrum of the cosmic infrared background (CIB) is a sensitive probe of the local primordial bispectrum. CIB measurements are integrated over a large volume so that the scale dependent bias from the primordial non-Gaussianity leaves a strong signal in the CIB power spectrum. Although galactic dust dominates over the non-Gaussian CIB signal, it is possible to mitigate the dust contamination with enough frequency channels, especially if high frequencies such as the Planck 857 GHz channel are available. We show that, in this case, measurements of the cosmic microwave background from future space missions should be able to probe the local bispectrum shape down to an amplitude |f_nl| < 1.
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