The Spectral Shape of the Gamma-ray Background from Blazars

TL;DR

This paper models the spectral shape of unresolved blazar emission contributing to the gamma-ray background, highlighting uncertainties and the potential for future data to improve predictions.

Contribution

It provides a new calculation of the unresolved blazar spectral shape from EGRET data, including uncertainty analysis and implications for future observations.

Findings

Unresolved blazar spectrum is mildly convex.

Current uncertainties are comparable to observed background uncertainties.

Future GLAST data will significantly reduce these uncertainties.

Abstract

The spectral shape of the unresolved emission from different classes of gamma-ray emitters can be used to disentangle the contributions from these populations to the extragalactic gamma-ray background (EGRB). We present a calculation of the unabsorbed spectral shape of the unresolved blazar contribution to the EGRB starting from the spectral index distribution (SID) of resolved EGRET blazars derived through a maximum-likelihood analysis accounting for measurement errors. In addition, we explicitly calculate the uncertainty in this theoretically predicted spectral shape, which enters through the spectral index distribution parameters. We find that: (a) the unresolved blazar emission spectrum is only mildly convex, and thus, even if blazars are shown by GLAST to be a dominant contribution to the ERGB at lower energies, they may be insufficient to explain the EGRB at higher energies; (b) the theoretically predicted unresolved spectral shape involves significant uncertainties due to the limited constraints provided by EGRET data on the SID parameters, which are comparable to the statistical uncertainties of the observed EGRET EGRB at high energies; (c) the increased number statistics which will be provided by GLAST will be sufficient to reduce this uncertainty by at least a factor of three.