A novel method for measuring the extragalactic background light Fermi application to the lo.pdf

a r X i v : 0 8 0 8 .4 0 8 6 v 1 [ a s t r o - p h ] 2 9 A u g 2 0 0 8 Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters A novel method for measuring the extragalactic background light: Fermi application to the lobes of Fornax A Markos Georganopoulos1,2, Rita M. Sambruna2, Demosthenes Kazanas2, Analia N. Cillis2, Chi C. Cheung2, Eric S. Perlman3, Katherine M. Blundell4, David S. Davis1,2 ABSTRACT We describe a new method for measuring the extragalactic background light (EBL) through the detection of γ-ray inverse Compton (IC) emission due to scat- tering of the EBL photons off relativistic electrons in the lobes of radio galaxies. Our method has no free physical parameters and is a powerful tool when the lobes are characterized by a high energy sharp break or cutoff in their electron energy distribution (EED). We show that such a feature will produce a high en- ergy IC ‘imprint’ of the EBL spectrum in which the radio lobes are embedded, and show how this imprint can be used to derive the EBL. We apply our method to the bright nearby radio galaxy Fornax A, for which we demonstrate, using WMAP and EGRET observations, that the EED of its lobes is characterized by a conveniently located cutoff, bringing the IC EBL emission into the Fermi energy range. We show that Fermi will set upper limits to the optical EBL and measure the more elusive infrared EBL. Subject headings: diffuse radiation — galaxies: active — quasars: general — radiation mechanisms: nonthermal — X-rays: galaxies 1Department of Physics, Joint Center for Astrophysics, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA 2Astrophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 660, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA 3Department of Physics and Space Sciences, Florida Institute of Technology, 150 West University Boule- vard, Melbourne, FL 32901, USA 4Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK – 2 – 1. Introduction The EBL that permeat