Evidence for a new light spin-zero boson from cosmological gamma-ray propagation?

被引：230

作者：

De Angelis, Alessandro ^{[1
,2
,3
,6
]}

Roncadelli, Marco ^{[4
,5
]}

Mansutti, Oriana ^{[1
,3
]}

机构：

[1] Univ Udine, Dipartimento Fis, I-33100 Udine, Italy

[2] INAF, Trieste, Italy

[3] Ist Nazl Fis Nucl, Sez Trieste, Trieste, Italy

[4] Univ Pavia, Dipartimento Fis Nucl & Teor, I-27100 Pavia, Italy

[5] Ist Nazl Fis Nucl, Sez Pavia, I-27100 Pavia, Italy

[6] IST, Lisbon, Portugal

来源：

PHYSICAL REVIEW D | 2007年 / 76卷 / 12期

关键词：

D O I：

10.1103/PhysRevD.76.121301

中图分类号：

P1 [天文学];

学科分类号：

0704 ;

摘要：

Recent findings by imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes indicate a large transparency of the Universe to gamma rays, which can be hardly explained within the current models of extragalactic background light. We show that the observed transparency is naturally produced by an oscillation mechanism-which can occur inside intergalactic magnetic fields-whereby a photon can become a new spin-zero boson with mass m < 10(-10) eV. Because the latter particle travels unimpeded throughout the Universe, photons can reach the observer even if the distance from the source considerably exceeds their mean free path. We compute the expected flux of gamma rays from blazar 3C279 at different energies. Our predictions can be tested in the near future by the gamma-ray telescopes H.E.S.S., MAGIC, CANGAROO, and VERITAS. Moreover, our result provides an important observational test for models of dark energy wherein quintessence is coupled to the photon through an effective dimension-five operator.

引用

页数：4

共 48 条

[31] New limits on the density of the extragalactic background light in the optical to the far infrared from the spectra of all known TeV blazars [J].