The Spectrum of Diffuse Cosmic Hard X-Rays Measured with HEAO–1

The spectrum of the diffuse isotropic component of cosmic X-rays over the 13–180 keV range was determined by the UCSD/MIT Hard X-Ray and GammaRay instrument (HEAO A4) on the High Energy Astronomical Observatory–1 (HEAO–1). The instrument consists of a complex of actively shielded and collimated scintillation counters, including the Low Energy Detector set from which the data reported here were obtained. These data join smoothly with the spectrum at lower energies reported by the GSFC HEAO A2 instrument and with that measured to 400 keV by the HEAO A4 Medium Energy Detectors. The HEAO data set also joins the recent results from COMPTEL on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory in the 1–10 MeV range, which failed to confirm the existence of an “MeV bump” in this range. Although the spectrum over the entire range 3 keV ≤ E ≤ 100 GeV can be fit by a simple empirical analytic expression, the origin is likely due to a number of distinct source components. The prevailing idea for the origin is that the hard X-ray spectrum is due to X-rays from various AGN components, particularly Seyfert galaxies extending to cosmological distances, and that the low energy gamma-rays may be due to emission from type 1a Supernovae, also integrated to cosmological distances. The higher energy gamma-ray spectrum defined by EGRET, also on the CGRO, may be due to unresolved gamma-ray emitting blazars. Models of production by these source components, extrapolated to the present epoch, must reproduce the observationally derived spectrum. Subject headings: X-rays, gamma-rays, diffuse background