The Imprint of The Extragalactic Background Light in the Gamma-Ray Spectra of Blazars - INSPIRE

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The Imprint of The Extragalactic Background Light in the Gamma-Ray Spectra of Blazars

Fermi-LAT

Collaboration

Nov, 2012

3 pages

Published in:

Science 338 (2012) 1190-1192

e-Print:

1211.1671 [astro-ph.CO]

DOI:

10.1126/science.1227160

Experiments:

FERMI-LAT

View in:

ADS Abstract Service

reference search271 citations

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Abstract: (arXiv)

The light emitted by stars and accreting compact objects through the history of the Universe is encoded in the intensity of the extragalactic background light (EBL). Knowledge of the EBL is important to understand the nature of star formation and galaxy evolution, but direct measurements of the EBL are lim- ited by Galactic and other foreground emissions. Here we report an absorption feature seen in the combined spectra of a sample of gamma-ray blazars out to a redshift of z

\sim

1.6. This feature is caused by attenuation of gamma rays by the EBL at optical to UV frequencies, and allowed us to measure the EBL flux density in this frequency band.

Note:

Published on ScienceExpress on Nov. 1st. Contact

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