M. Kachelriess, S. Ostapchenko, R. Tomas
A Monte Carlo program for the simulation of electromagnetic cascades
initiated by high-energy photons and electrons interacting with extragalactic
background light (EBL) is presented. Pair production and inverse Compton
scattering on EBL photons as well as synchrotron losses and deflections of the
charged component in extragalactic magnetic fields (EGMF) are included in the
simulation. Weighted sampling of the cascade development is applied to reduce
the number of secondary particles and to speed up computations. As final
result, the simulation procedure provides the energy, the observation angle,
and the time delay of secondary cascade particles at the present epoch.
Possible applications are the study of TeV blazars and the influence of the
EGMF on their spectra or the calculation of the contribution from ultrahigh
energy cosmic rays or dark matter to the diffuse extragalactic gamma-ray
background. As an illustration, we present results for deflections and
time-delays relevant for the derivation of limits on the EGMF.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.5508
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