Extended gamma-ray emission from blazars: prospect of detection with future Cherenkov telescopes

M. FERNANDEZ ALONSO, A.D. SUPANITSKY, A.C. ROVERO

Córdoba

Congreso; 57 Reunión Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Astronomía; 2014

Very high energy (VHE: >100 GeV) gamma rays coming from blazars can pair-produce on the extragalactic background light (EBL) generating an electromagnetic cascade. Depending on the intergalactic magnetic field (IGMF) intensity, this cascade may result in an extended isotropic emission of photons around the source (halo), or in a broadening of the emission beam. The detection of this effects may lead to importantconstrains both to the IGMF intensity and the EBL density, quantities of great relevance in cosmological models. We use Monte Carlo simulations of these cascades to built the angular and spectral distributions of photons coming from a source at a given redshift. We consider the particular case of a monochromatic source emitting 100 TeV photons at a redshift z=0.129 and develop a method to study the feasibility of detecting the effect, assuming a simplified model for a future Cherenkov telescope system.