High-redshift blazars (z ⩾ 2.5) are one of the most powerful classes of gamma-ray sources in the Universe. These objects posses the highest jet powers and luminosities and have black-hole masses often in excess of 109 solar masses. In addition, high-redshift blazars are important cosmological probes and serve as test objects for blazar evolution models. Due to their large distance, their high-energy emission peak is downshifted to energies below the GeV range, which makes them difficult to study with Fermi/LAT and only the very brightest objects are detectable. Hence, only a small number of high-redshift blazars could be detected with Fermi/LAT so far. In this work, we present a strategy to significantly increase the detection statistics at redshift z ⩾ 2.5 via a search for flaring events in high-redshift gamma-ray blazars whose long-term flux remains below the sensitivity limit of Fermi/LAT. Seven previously GeV undetected high-redshift blazars have been identified from their bright monthly outburst periods, while more detections are expected in the future.

At energies approaching the Planck energy scale 1019GeV, several quantum-gravity theories predict that familiar concepts such as Lorentz (LIV) symmetry can be broken. Such extreme energies are currently unreachable by experiments on Earth, but for photons traveling over cosmological distances the accumulated deviations from the Lorentz symmetry may be measurable using the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). To study the spectral hardening feature observed in some VHE gamma-ray blazars, we calculate the reduction of the EBL gamma-gamma opacity due to the existence of underdense regions along the line of sight to VHE -gamma ray sources and we compared with the possibility of a LIV signature. Considering the LIV effect, we found that the cosmic opacity for VHE-gamma rays with energy more than 10 TeV can be strongly reduced. I will further discuss the impact of LIV on the Compton scattering process, and how future CTA observations may open an exciting window on studies of the fundamental physics.