THE SPECTRUM OF ISOTROPIC DIFFUSE GAMMA-RAY EMISSION BETWEEN 100 MeV AND 820 GeV
M. Ackermann ; M. Ajello ; A. Albert ; P. Giommi; E. Cavazzuti et al.
Jan - 2015
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/799/1/86
ISSN : 0004-637X ;
journal : The Astrophysical Journal

Volume : 799 ; Issue : 1
type: Article Journal

Abstract
The γ-ray sky can be decomposed into individually detected sources, diffuse emission attributed to the interactions of Galactic cosmic rays with gas and radiation fields, and a residual all-sky emission component commonly called the isotropic diffuse γ-ray background (IGRB). The IGRB comprises all extragalactic emissions too faint or too diffuse to be resolved in a given survey, as well as any residual Galactic foregrounds that are approximately isotropic. The first IGRB measurement with the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (Fermi) used 10 months of sky-survey data and considered an energy range between 200 MeV and 100 GeV. Improvements in event selection and characterization of cosmic-ray backgrounds, better understanding of the diffuse Galactic emission (DGE), and a longer data accumulation of 50 months allow for a refinement and extension of the IGRB measurement with the LAT, now covering the energy range from 100 MeV to 820 GeV. The IGRB spectrum shows a significant high-energy cutoff feature and can be well described over nearly four decades in energy by a power law with exponential cutoff having a spectral index of 2.32 ± 0.02 and a break energy of (279 ± 52) GeV using our baseline DGE model. The total intensity attributed to the IGRB is (7.2 ± 0.6) × 10–6 cm–2 s–1 sr–1 above 100 MeV, with an additional +15%/–30% systematic uncertainty due to the Galactic diffuse foregrounds.

keywords : diffuse radiation; gamma rays: diffuse background