The diffuse γ-ray background is dominated by star-forming galaxies

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has revealed a diffuse γ-ray background at energies from 0.1 gigaelectronvolt to 1 teraelectronvolt, which can be separated into emission from our Galaxy and an isotropic, extragalactic component¹. Previous efforts to understand the latter have been hampered by the lack of physical models capable of predicting the γ-ray emission produced by the many candidate sources, primarily active galactic nuclei^2-5 and star-forming galaxies^6-10, leaving their contributions poorly constrained. Here we present a calculation of the contribution of star-forming galaxies to the γ-ray background that does not rely on empirical scalings and is instead based on a physical model for the γ-ray emission produced when cosmic rays accelerated in supernova remnants interact with the interstellar medium¹¹. After validating the model against local observations, we apply it to the observed cosmological star-forming galaxy population and recover an excellent match to both the total intensity and the spectral slope of the γ-ray background, demonstrating that star-forming galaxies alone can explain the full diffuse, isotropic γ-ray background.

Unresolved Gamma-Ray Sky through its Angular Power Spectrum

The gamma-ray sky has been observed with unprecedented accuracy in the last decade by the Fermi -large area telescope (LAT), allowing us to resolve and understand the high-energy Universe. The nature of the remaining unresolved emission [unresolved gamma-ray background (UGRB)] below the LAT source detection threshold can be uncovered by characterizing the amplitude and angular scale of the UGRB fluctuation field. This Letter presents a measurement of the UGRB autocorrelation angular power spectrum based on eight years of Fermi-LAT Pass 8 data products. The analysis is designed to be robust against contamination from resolved sources and noise systematics. The sensitivity to subthreshold sources is greatly enhanced with respect to previous measurements. We find evidence (with ∼3.7σ significance) that the scenario in which two classes of sources contribute to the UGRB signal is favored over a single class. A double power law with exponential cutoff can explain the anisotropy energy spectrum well, with photon indices of the two populations being 2.55±0.23 and 1.86±0.15.