A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

The mystery of spectral breaks: Lyman continuum absorption by photon-photon pair production in the Fermi GeV spectra of bright blazars




AuthorsBoris E. Stern, Juri Poutanen

PublisherIOP PUBLISHING LTD

Publication year2014

JournalAstrophysical Journal

Journal acronymApJ

Article number8

Volume794

Issue1

Number of pages7

ISSN0004-637X

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/794/1/8


Abstract

We re-analyze Fermi/LAT γ -ray spectra of bright blazars using the new Pass 7 version of the detector response files and detect breaks at 5 GeV in the rest-frame spectra of 3C 454.3 and possibly also 4C +21.35, associated with the photon–photon pair production absorption by the He ii Lyman continuum (LyC). We also detect significant breaks at 20 GeV associated with hydrogen LyC in both the individual spectra and the stacked redshift-corrected spectrum of several bright blazars. The detected breaks in the stacked spectra univocally prove that they are associated with atomic ultraviolet emission features of the quasar broad-line region (BLR). The dominance of the absorption by the hydrogen Ly complex over He ii, a small detected optical depth, and break energy consistent with head-on collisions with LyC photons imply that the γ -ray emission site is located within the BLR, but most of the BLR emission comes from a flat disk-like structure producing little opacity. Alternatively, the LyC emission region size might be larger than the BLR size measured from reverberation mapping, and/or the γ -ray emitting region is extended. These solutions would resolve the long-standing issue of how the multi-hundred GeV photons can escape from the emission zone without being absorbed by softer photons. 



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