Constraints on Extragalactic Background Light from Cherenkov telescopes: status and perspectives for the next 5 years

Details Constraints on Extragalactic Background Light from Cherenkov telescopes: status and perspectives for the next 5 years Constraints on Extragalactic Background Light from Cherenkov telescopes: status and perspectives for the next 5 years

2009-04-05

arxiv.org/abs/0904.0774v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

11 pages, 7 figures. Proceedings of the Conference "Science with the New Generation of High Energy Gamma-Ray Experiments" (Sci

Scientific paper

10.1063/1.3125771

Very high energy (VHE, E > 30 GeV) gamma-rays are absorbed via interaction with low-energy photons from the extragalactic background light (EBL) if the involved photon energies are above the threshold for electron-positron pair creation. The VHE gamma-ray absorption, which is energy dependent and increases strongly with redshift, distorts the VHE energy spectra observed from distant objects. The observed energy spectra of the AGNs carry therefore an imprint of the EBL. Recent detections of hard spectra of distant blazars (z = 0.11 - 0.54) by H.E.S.S. and MAGIC put strong constraints on the EBL density in the optical to near infrared waveband. It is, however, not yet possible to distinguish between an intrinsic softening of blazar spectra and a softening caused by the interaction with low energy EBL photons. In this paper, we give an overview of the EBL constraints, their limitations and perspectives for the joint efforts of the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space telescope and imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes.

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