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The TeV Blazar Measurement of the Extragalactic Background Light

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 نشر من قبل Rebecca Reesman
 تاريخ النشر 2013
  مجال البحث فيزياء
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Gamma-rays propagating through space are likely to be extinguished via electron-positron pair production off of the ambient extragalactic background light (EBL). The spectrum of the EBL is produced by starlight (and starlight reprocessed by dust) from all galaxies throughout the history of the Universe. The attenuation of 40 - 400 GeV gamma-rays has been observed by textit{Fermi} and used to measure the EBL spectrum over energies 1 eV -10 eV out to redshift $zsim 1$. Measurements of several TeV blazers are consistent with attenuation, attributed to the EBL at redshift $zsim 0.1$. Here we simultaneously analyze a set of TeV blazers at $zsim 0.1$ to measure the optical depth for 100 GeV - 10 TeV gamma-rays, which interact with EBL of energies 0.05 eV - 5 eV. Using a suite of models for the EBL, we show that the optical depth indicated by TeV blazar attenuation is in good agreement with the optical depths measured by textit{Fermi} at lower gamma-ray energies and higher redshifts.



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