ROLE OF LINE-OF-SIGHT COSMIC-RAY INTERACTIONS IN FORMING THE SPECTRA OF DISTANT BLAZARS IN TeV GAMMA RAYS AND HIGH-ENERGY NEUTRINOS
ROLE OF LINE-OF-SIGHT COSMIC-RAY INTERACTIONS IN FORMING THE SPECTRA OF DISTANT BLAZARS IN TeV GAMMA RAYS AND HIGH-ENERGY NEUTRINOS
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DOI：
10.1088/0004-637x/731/1/51
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发表时间：
2010-11
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Warren Essey;O. Kalashev;A. Kusenko;J. Beacom
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Warren Essey;O. Kalashev;A. Kusenko;J. Beacom
活动星系核（AGN）可以产生伽马射线和宇宙射线。观测到的来自遥远耀变体的高能伽马射线信号可能主要是由宇宙射线质子与背景光子相互作用沿沿着产生的次级伽马射线。这解释了在遥远的耀变体中观测到的令人惊讶的低衰减，因为平均而言，次级伽马射线的产生距离地球比距离源的距离近得多。因此，在TeV范围内观测到的光谱不依赖于固有的伽马射线光谱，而它取决于宇宙射线源的输出。我们将这一假设应用于一些来源，在每种情况下，我们都获得了很好的拟合，加强了对所观察到的光谱的解释，这是由于二次伽马射线。我们探讨了这种解释对河外背景光限制和活动星系核中宇宙射线产生的影响。我们还对中微子信号进行了预测，这有助于探测活动星系核中宇宙线的加速。
Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) can produce both gamma rays and cosmic rays. The observed high-energy gamma-ray signals from distant blazars may be dominated by secondary gamma rays produced along the line of sight by the interactions of cosmic-ray protons with background photons. This explains the surprisingly low attenuation observed for distant blazars, because the production of secondary gamma rays occurs, on average, much closer to Earth than the distance to the source. Thus, the observed spectrum in the TeV range does not depend on the intrinsic gamma-ray spectrum, while it depends on the output of the source in cosmic rays. We apply this hypothesis to a number of sources and, in every case, we obtain an excellent fit, strengthening the interpretation of the observed spectra as being due to secondary gamma rays. We explore the ramifications of this interpretation for limits on the extragalactic background light and for the production of cosmic rays in AGNs. We also make predictions for the neutrino signals, which can help probe the acceleration of cosmic rays in AGNs.