Discovery of very high energy gamma-ray emission from 3c 279 and 3c 66a/b with the magic telescope

• Autores: Manel Errando
• Directores de la Tesis: Manel Martínez Rodríguez (dir. tes.), Daniel Mazin (codir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2009
• Idioma: español
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Fabrizio Tavecchio (presid.), Francisco Javier Castander Serentill (secret.), German Hermann (voc.)
• Materias:
  • Astronomía y astrofísica
    • Cosmología y cosmogonía
      • Rayos cósmicos
      • Galaxias
  • Física
    • Electromagnetismo
      • Rayos gamma
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• Resumen

  • Blazars are a subclass of active galactic nuclei, which contain a relativistic jet pointing towards the observer, and they are the most prominent extragalactic objects emitting very high energy (VHE) gamma rays. Finding distant new sources of this class does not only provide a deeper understanding of the physics processes inside the jet but also enables studies of the Extragalactic Background Light (EBL). The attenuation of the VHE flux by the EBL increases with the distance of the source and the gamma-ray energy. This prevented detection of distant blazars by previous generation of Cherenkov telescopes, which had a relatively high energy threshold. The MAGIC telescope has a low threshold of 60 GeV at zenith, which significantly increases chances to detect VHE emission from distant blazars. This thesis presents a selection of distant blazars that were observed with the MAGIC telescope searching for VHE gamma-rays. The results of this observations are described and discussed, including the detection of MAGIC J0223+430. This gamma-ray source was found misplaced by 0.1 degrees from the distant blazar 3C 66A, and spatially coinciding with the radio-galaxy 3C 66B. The possible association of this source with these two known objects is discussed in the thesis. The detection of a gamma-ray flare of the quasar 3C 279 in February 2006 with MAGIC is also presented. For the other 4 distant blazars observed with MAGIC, upper limits are given. Finally, the implication of this results in terms of EBL absorption and blazar emission mechanisms is discussed.