PoS - Proceedings of Science
Volume 301 - 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2017) - Session Gamma-Ray Astronomy. GA-extra-galactic
The gamma-ray source-count distribution as a function of energy
H. Zechlin
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: August 16, 2017
Published on: August 03, 2018
Abstract
Photon counts statistics have been shown to provide a sensitive tool for characterizing gamma-ray source populations and the composition of the gamma-ray sky. In this contribution, we extend the use of the standard 1-point probability distribution function (1pPDF) to decompose the high-latitude gamma-ray flux observed with Fermi-LAT into emission from point sources, Galactic foreground, and diffuse isotropic background. To that aim, we perform an energy-binned analysis of the gamma-ray data between 1 and 171 GeV. We measure the source-count distribution $\mathrm{d}N/\mathrm{d}S$ in several energy bins, and we demonstrate that our results extend current measurements driven by point-source catalogs to so far undetected source contributions. The source-count distribution as a function of flux is found to be compatible with a broken power law. Upper limits on further possible breaks as well as the angular power of unresolved sources are derived. We discuss the composition of the gamma-ray sky and future prospects and capabilities of the 1pPDF method.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.301.0644
How to cite

Metadata are provided both in "article" format (very similar to INSPIRE) as this helps creating very compact bibliographies which can be beneficial to authors and readers, and in "proceeding" format which is more detailed and complete.

Open Access
Creative Commons LicenseCopyright owned by the author(s) under the term of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.