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Abstract Cosmic voids may have novel effects on the propagation of high-energy photons. We consider the fraction of the line of sight that intersect voids (termed “voidiness”). A previous study showed that active galactic nuclei (AGN) detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) lie along voidier lines of sight than redshift-matched populations of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) optically detected quasars in the redshift range from 0.4 ≤z < 0.7. We explore this difference and various astrophysical explanations for it. Weaker intergalactic magnetic fields in voids would naturally enhance the gamma-ray cascading flux within the Fermi-LAT point-spread function. We find that line-of-sight interactions increasing the flux in the Fermi-LAT energy band by ∼0.1% Mpc^–1of void traversed may be sufficient to result in the observed difference in voidiness distributions. Voidiness comparisons between SDSS QSOs and AGN detected by imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes at very high energies (VHEs) do not yield any conclusive statement, likely because of the limited VHE sample size, and therefore are inconclusive about the role of possibly weaker extragalactic background light within voids. Finally, we measure that 28% ± 3% of gamma-ray-detected sources exist within a void (consistent with random mock populations) compared to 19.1% ± 0.3% of SDSS quasars. We do not find any significant local void effect for gamma-ray sources that would explain the voidiness difference between Fermi-LAT gamma-ray and SDSS QSO sources. These results suggest that the observed difference in voidiness distributions may be due to line-of-sight interactions rather than the local emission environment of gamma-ray AGN. 

Abstract The large-scale universal structure comprises strands of dark matter and galaxies with large underdense volumes known as voids. We measure the fraction of the line of sight that intersects voids for active galactic nuclei (AGN) detected by Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) and quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). This “voidiness” fraction is a rudimentary proxy for the density along the line of sight to the galaxies. The voidiness of SDSS-observed quasars (QSOs) is distinctly different from randomly distributed source populations, with a medianp-value of 4.6 × 10⁻⁵and ≪1 × 10⁻⁷, when compared with 500 simulated populations with randomly simulated locations but matching redshifts in the 0.1 ≤z< 0.4 and 0.4 ≤z< 0.7 intervals, respectively. A similar comparison of the voidiness for LAT-detected AGN shows medianp-values greater than 0.05 in each redshift interval. When comparing the SDSS QSO population to the LAT-detected AGN, we mitigate potential bias from a relationship between redshift and voidiness by comparing the LAT-detected AGN to a “redshift-matched” set of SDSS QSOs. The LAT-detected AGN between a redshift of 0.4 and 0.7 show higher voidiness compared to the redshift-matched SDSS QSO populations, with a medianp-value of 2.3 × 10⁻⁵(a 4.1σdeviation). No deviation is found when comparing the same populations between redshifts of 0.1 and 0.4 (p> 0.05). We do not study possible causes of this voidiness difference. It might relate to propagation effects from lower magnetic or radiative background fields within voids or to an environment more favorable for gamma-ray production for AGN near voids. 

We present a catalog of results of gamma-ray observations made by VERITAS, published from 2008 to 2020. VERITAS is a ground based imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope observatory located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in southern Arizona, sensitive to gamma-ray photons with energies in the range of ∼ 100 GeV - 30 TeV. Its observation targets include galactic sources such as binary star systems, pulsar wind nebulae, and supernova remnants, extragalactic sources like active galactic nuclei, star forming galaxies, and gamma-ray bursts, and some unidentified objects. The catalog includes in digital form all of the high-level science results published in 112 papers using VERITAS data and currently contains data on 57 sources. The catalog has been made accessible via GitHub and at NASA's HEASARC. 

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next-generation ground-based observatory for very-high-energy gamma rays. One candidate design for CTA's medium-sized telescopes consists of the Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (SCT), featuring innovative dual-mirror optics. The SCT project has built and is currently operating a 9.7-m prototype SCT (pSCT) at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO); such optical design enables the use of a compact camera with state-of-the art silicon photomultiplier detectors. A partially-equipped camera has recently successfully detected the Crab Nebula with a statistical significance of 8.6 standard deviations. A funded upgrade of the pSCT focal plane sensors and electronics is currently ongoing, which will bring the total number of channels from 1600 to 11328 and the telescope field of view from about 2.7° to 8° . In this work, we will describe the technical and scientific performance of the pSCT. 

For the first time in the history of ground-based x-ray astronomy, the on-axis performance of the dual mirror, aspheric, aplanatic Schwarzschild-Couder optical system has been demonstrated in a 9:7-m aperture imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope. The novel design of the prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (pSCT) is motivated by the need of the next-generation Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory to have the ability to perform wide (>=8°) field-of-view observations simultaneously with superior imaging of atmospheric cascades (resolution of 0:067 per pixel or better). The pSCT design, if implemented in the CTA installation, has the potential to improve significantly both the x-ray angular resolution and the off-axis sensitivity of the observatory, reaching nearly the theoretical limit of the technique and thereby making a major impact on the CTA observatory sky survey programs, follow-up observations of multi-messenger transients with poorly known initial localization, as well as on the spatially resolved spectroscopic studies of extended x-ray sources. This contribution reports on the initial alignment procedures and point-spread-function results for the challenging segmented aspheric primary and secondary mirrors of the pSCT.