The Fermi LAT | Searcharxiv

arXiv2010

Fermi Large Area Telescope Constraints on the Gamma-ray Opacity of the Universe

The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) includes photons with wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared, which are effective at attenuating gamma rays with energy above ~10 GeV during propagation from sources at cosmological distances. This results in a redshift- and energy-dependent attenuation of the gamma-ray flux of extragalactic sources such as blazars and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). The Large Area Telescope onboard Fermi detects a sample of gamma-ray blazars with redshift up to z~3, and GRBs with redshift up to z~4.3. Using photons above 10 GeV collected by Fermi over more than one year of observations for these sources, we investigate the effect of gamma-ray flux attenuation by the EBL. We place upper limits on the gamma-ray opacity of the Universe at various energies and redshifts, and compare this with predictions from well-known EBL models. We find that an EBL intensity in the optical-ultraviolet wavelengths as great as predicted by the "baseline" model of Stecker et al. (2006) can be ruled out with high confidence.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2010

Fermi Observations of GRB 090510: A Short Hard Gamma-Ray Burst with an Additional, Hard Power-Law Component from 10 keV to GeV Energies

We present detailed observations of the bright short-hard gamma-ray burst GRB 090510 made with the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi observatory. GRB 090510 is the first burst detected by the LAT that shows strong evidence for a deviation from a Band spectral fitting function during the prompt emission phase. The time-integrated spectrum is fit by the sum of a Band function with $\Epeak = 3.9\pm 0.3$\,MeV, which is the highest yet measured, and a hard power-law component with photon index $-1.62\pm 0.03$ that dominates the emission below $\approx$\,20\,keV and above $\approx$\,100\,MeV. The onset of the high-energy spectral component appears to be delayed by $\sim$\,0.1\,s with respect to the onset of a component well fit with a single Band function. A faint GBM pulse and a LAT photon are detected 0.5\,s before the main pulse. During the prompt phase, the LAT detected a photon with energy $30.5^{+5.8}_{-2.6}$ GeV, the highest ever measured from a short GRB. Observation of this photon sets a minimum bulk outflow Lorentz factor, $Γ\ga$\,1200, using simple $γγ$ opacity arguments for this GRB at redshift $z = 0.903$ and a variability time scale on the order of tens of ms for the $\approx$\,100\,keV--few MeV flux. Stricter high confidence estimates imply $Γ\ga 1000$ and still require that the outflows powering short GRBs are at least as highly relativistic as those of long duration GRBs. Implications of the temporal behavior and power-law shape of the additional component on synchrotron/synchrotron self-Compton (SSC), external-shock synchrotron, and hadronic models are considered.

astro-ph.HE↗