The optical depth of gamma radiation due to interaction with the thermal bremsstrahlung of hot gas in galaxy clusters.

Abstract

The interaction of high energy gamma quantum to thermal bremsstrahlung photons of hot intracluster gas with producing electron-positron pair is considered. It is supposed that galaxy cluster is relaxed and electron number density and temperature profiles are spherical symmetric. The dependence of optical depth on gamma quantum energy and distance to cluster center is considered. It is shown that the optical depth due to considered interaction is about 10−8 − 10−5 at gamma quantum energy 100 MeV - 1 TeV.