BL Lac Contribution to the Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Background

TL;DR

This paper models how gamma-ray emissions from blazars, including electromagnetic cascades, contribute significantly to the extragalactic gamma-ray background, aligning with observations and providing insights into high-energy astrophysical processes.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive model for cascade contributions from faint blazars to the gamma-ray background, integrating observational data and spectral templates for different blazar types.

Findings

Cascade emission from blazars can account for up to 30% of the gamma-ray background.

The model's predictions are consistent with EGRET and air-Cherenkov telescope observations.

High-peaked blazars' contribution is limited by their low number density.

Abstract

Very high energy gamma-rays from blazars traversing cosmological distances through the metagalactic radiation field can convert into electron-positron pairs in photon-photon collisions. The converted gamma-rays initiate electromagnetic cascades driven by inverse-Compton scattering off the microwave background photons. Using a model for the time-dependent metagalactic radiation field consistent with all currently available far-infrared-to-optical data, we calculate the cascade contribution from faint, unresolved high- and low-peaked blazars to the extragalactic gamma-ray background as measured by EGRET. For low-peaked blazars, we adopt a spectral index consistent with the mean spectral index of EGRET detected blazars, and the luminosity function determined by Chiang and Mukherjee (1998). For high-peaked blazars, we adopt template spectra matching prototype sources observed with air-Cherenkov telescopes up to 30 TeV, and a luminosity function based on X-ray measurements. The low number of about 20 for nearby high-peaked blazars with a flux exceeding 10^-11 cm^-2 s^-1 above 300 GeV inferred from the luminosity function is consistent with the results from air-Cherenkov telescope observations. Including the cascade emission from higher redshifts, the total high-peaked blazar contribution to the observed gamma-ray background at GeV energies can account up to about 30.