Science with the New Generation of High Energy Gamma-Ray Experiments #6

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

9 Oct 2008, 18:10

20m

Padova

Extragalactic Sources 2

Speaker

Daniel Mazin (IFAE, Barcelona)

Description

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 (z = 0.11 - 0.54) blazars 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 talk, I shall 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.