Contribution of the Gamma-ray Loud Radio Galaxies Core Emissions to the Cosmic MeV and GeV Gamma-Ray Background Radiation

TL;DR

This study investigates how gamma-ray loud radio galaxy cores contribute to the cosmic gamma-ray background, finding they account for about 25% above 100 MeV and significantly influence the 1-30 MeV band, thus explaining nearly half of the unresolved EGRB.

Contribution

It establishes a correlation between radio and gamma-ray luminosities and quantifies the contribution of radio galaxies to the extragalactic gamma-ray background.

Findings

Gamma-ray loud radio galaxies explain ~25% of the unresolved EGRB above 100 MeV.

They contribute significantly to the 1-30 MeV gamma-ray background.

Radio loud AGNs account for ~47% of the unresolved EGRB.

Abstract

The Fermi gamma-ray satellite has recently detected gamma-ray emissions from radio galaxy cores. From these samples, we first examine the correlation between the luminosities at 5 GHz, L_{5GHz}, and at 0.1-10 GeV, L_{gamma}, of these gamma-ray loud radio galaxies. We find that the correlation is significant with L_{gamma} \propto L_{5GHz}^{1.16} based on a partial correlation analysis. Using this correlation and the radio luminosity function (RLF) of radio galaxies, we further explore the contribution of gamma-ray loud radio galaxies to the unresolved extragalactic gamma-ray background (EGRB). The gamma-ray luminosity function is obtained by normalizing the RLF to reproduce the source count distribution of the Fermi gamma-ray loud radio galaxies. We find that gamma-ray loud radio galaxies will explain ~25% of the unresolved Fermi EGRB flux above 100 MeV and will also make a significant contribution to the EGRB in the 1-30 MeV energy band. Since blazars explain 22% of the EGRB above 100 MeV, radio loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs) population explains ~47% of the unresolved EGRB. We further make an interpretation on the origin of the EGRB. The observed EGRB spectrum at 0.2-100 GeV does not show an absorption signature by the extragalactic background light. Thus, the dominant population of the origin of EGRB at very high energy (>30 GeV) might be nearby gamma-ray emitting sources or sources with very hard gamma-ray spectrum.