EBL Inhomogeneity and Hard-Spectrum Gamma-Ray Sources
  The unexpectedly hard very-high-energy (VHE; $E > 100$ GeV) $\gamma$-ray
spectra of a few distant blazars have been interpreted as evidence for a
reduction of the $\gamma\gamma$ opacity of the Universe due to the interaction
of VHE $\gamma$-rays with the extragalactic background light (EBL) compared to
the expectation from our current knowledge of the density and cosmological
evolution of the EBL. One of the suggested solutions to this problem consisted
of the inhomogeneity of the EBL. In this paper, we study the effects of such
inhomogeneities on the energy density of the EBL (which then also becomes
anisotropic) and the resulting $\gamma\gamma$ opacity. Specifically, we
investigate the effects of cosmic voids along the line of sight to a distant
blazar. We find that the effect of such voids on the $\gamma\gamma$ opacity,
for any realistic void size, is only of the order of $\lesssim 1$ % and much
smaller than expected from a simple linear scaling of the $\gamma\gamma$
opacity with the line-of-sight galaxy under-density due to a cosmic void.
