Gamma rays from the quasar PKS 1441+25: story of an escape

Abeysekara, A. U.; Archambault, S.; Archer, A.; Aune, T.; Barnacka, A.; Benbow, W.; Bird, R.; Biteau, J.; Buckley, J. H.; Bugaev, V.; Cardenzana, J. V.; Cerruti, M.; Chen, X.; Christiansen, J. L.; Ciupik, L.; Connolly, M. P.; Coppi, P.; Cui, W.; Dickinson, H. J.; Dumm, J.; Eisch, J. D.; Errando, M.; Falcone, A.; Feng, Q.; Finley, J. P.; Fleischhack, H.; Flinders, A.; Fortin, P.; Fortson, L.; Furniss, A.; Gillanders, G. H.; Griffin, S.; Grube, J.; Gyuk, G.; Hütten, M.; Håkansson, N.; Hanna, D.; Holder, J.; Humensky, T. B.; Johnson, C. A.; Kaaret, P.; Kar, P.; Kelley-Hoskins, N.; Khassen, Y.; Kieda, D.; Krause, M.; Krennrich, F.; Kumar, S.; Lang, M. J.; Maier, G.; McArthur, S.; McCann, A.; Meagher, K.; Moriarty, P.; Mukherjee, R.; Nieto, D.; O'Faoláin de Bhróithe, A.; Ong, R. A.; Otte, A. N.; Park, N.; Perkins, J. S.; Petrashyk, A.; Pohl, M.; Popkow, A.; Pueschel, E.; Quinn, J.; Ragan, K.; Ratliff, G.; Reynolds, P. T.; Richards, G. T.; Roache, E.; Rousselle, J.; Santander, M.; Sembroski, G. H.; Shahinyan, K.; Smith, A. W.; Staszak, D.; Telezhinsky, I.; Todd, N. W.; Tucci, J. V.; Tyler, J.; Vassiliev, V. V.; Vincent, S.; Wakely, S. P.; Weiner, O. M.; Weinstein, A.; Wilhelm, A.; Williams, D. A.; Zitzer, B.; Smith, P. S.; Holoien, T. W.-S.; Prieto, J. L.; Kochanek, C. S.; Stanek, K. Z.; Shappee, B. J.; Hovatta, T.; Max-Moerbeck, W.; Pearson, T. J.; Reeves, R. A.; Richards, J. L.; Readhead, A. C. S.; Madejski, G. M.; Djorgovski, S. G.; Drake, A. J.; Graham, M. J.; Mahabal, A.

doi:10.1088/2041-8205/815/2/L22

Published December 15, 2015 | Version Submitted + Published

Journal Article Open

Gamma rays from the quasar PKS 1441+25: story of an escape

1. University of Utah
2. McGill University
3. Washington University in St. Louis
4. University of California, Los Angeles
5. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
6. University College Dublin
7. University of California, Santa Cruz
8. University of Paris-Saclay
9. Iowa State University
10. Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Énergies
11. University of Potsdam
12. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY
13. California Polytechnic State University
14. Adler Planetarium
15. National University of Ireland, Galway
16. Yale University
17. Purdue University West Lafayette
18. University of Minnesota
19. Columbia University
20. Pennsylvania State University
21. California State University, East Bay
22. University of Delaware
23. University of Iowa
24. Georgia Institute of Technology
25. University of Chicago
26. Goddard Space Flight Center
27. Munster Technological University
28. University of Maryland, College Park
29. Argonne National Laboratory
30. The Ohio State University
31. Diego Portales University
32. Millennium Institute of Astrophysics
33. Carnegie Observatories
34. Aalto University
35. National Radio Astronomy Observatory
36. California Institute of Technology
37. University of Concepción
38. Stanford University

Outbursts from gamma-ray quasars provide insights on the relativistic jets of active galactic nuclei and constraints on the diffuse radiation fields that fill the Universe. The detection of significant emission above 100 GeV from a distant quasar would show that some of the radiated gamma rays escape pair-production interactions with low-energy photons, be it the extragalactic background light (EBL), or the radiation near the supermassive black hole lying at the jet's base. VERITAS detected gamma-ray emission up to 200 GeV from PKS 1441+25 (z=0.939) during April 2015, a period of high activity across all wavelengths. This observation of PKS 1441+25 suggests that the emission region is located thousands of Schwarzschild radii away from the black hole. The gamma-ray detection also sets a stringent upper limit on the near-ultraviolet to near-infrared EBL intensity, suggesting that galaxy surveys have resolved most, if not all, of the sources of the EBL at these wavelengths.

Additional Information

© 2015. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2015 August 10; accepted 2015 November 17; published 2015 December 15. This research is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution, and by NSERC in Canada, with additional support from NASA Swift GI grant NNX15AR38G. We acknowledge the excellent work of the technical support staff at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory and at the collaborating institutions in the construction and operation of the instrument. The VERITAS Collaboration is grateful to Trevor Weekes for his seminal contributions and leadership in the field of VHE gamma-ray astrophysics, which made this study possible. ASAS-SN thanks LCOGT, NSF, Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation, OSU/CCAPP and MAS/Chile for their support. The observations at Steward Observatory are funded through NASA Fermi GI grant NNX12AO93G. CRTS is supported by the NSF grants AST-1313422 and AST-1413600. The OVRO 40-m monitoring program is supported in part by NASA grants NNX08AW31G and NNX11A043G, and NSF grants AST-0808050 and AST-1109911. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of NSF operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. This research has made use of data from the MOJAVE database that is maintained by the MOJAVE team (Lister et al. 2009).

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Eprint ID: 64197
Resolver ID: CaltechAUTHORS:20160203-120802229

Describes: http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.04434 (URL)

Department of Energy (DOE)
Smithsonian Institution
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
NASA
NNX15AR38G
NASA
NNX12AO93G
NSF
AST-1313422
NSF
AST-1413600
NASA
NNX08AW31G
NASA
NNX11A043G
NASA
AST-0808050
NASA
AST-1109911
Associated Universities, Inc
Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network
Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation
Ohio State University
Instituto Milenio de Astrofísica (MAS)

Created: 2016-02-03

Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated: 2023-03-16

Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech groups: NuSTAR, Space Radiation Laboratory, Owens Valley Radio Observatory

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Gamma rays from the quasar PKS 1441+25: story of an escape

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