Reconnection-driven plasmoids in blazars: fast flares on a slow envelope

Minute-timescale TeV flares have been observed in several blazars. The fast flaring requires compact regions in the jet that boost their emission towards the observer at an extreme Doppler factor of delta>50. For TeV photons to avoid annihilation in the broad line region of PKS 1222+216, the flares must come from large (pc) scales challenging most models proposed to explain them. Here we elaborate on the magnetic reconnection minijet model for the blazar flaring, focusing on the inherently time-dependent aspects of the process of magnetic reconnection. I argue that, for the physical conditions prevailing in blazar jets, the reconnection layer fragments leading to the formation a large number of plasmoids. Occasionally a plasmoid grows to become a large, "monster" plasmoid. I show that radiation emitted from the reconnection event can account for the observed "envelope" of ~ day-long blazar activity while radiation from monster plasmoids can power the fastest TeV flares. The model is applied to several blazars with observed fast flaring. The inferred distance of the dissipation zone from the black hole and the typical size of the reconnection regions are R_diss~0.3-1 pc and l' \simless 10^{16} cm, respectively. The required magnetization of the jet at this distance is modest: sigma ~a few. Such dissipation distance R_diss and reconnection size l' are expected if the jet contains field structures with size of the order of the black-hole horizon.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, MNRAS, in pres

Spherically symmetric, static spacetimes in a tensor-vector-scalar theory

Recently, a relativistic gravitation theory has been proposed [J. D. Bekenstein, Phys. Rev. D {\bf 70}, 083509 (2004)] that gives the Modified Newtonian Dynamics (or MOND) in the weak acceleration regime. The theory is based on three dynamic gravitational fields and succeeds in explaining a large part of extragalactic and gravitational lensing phenomenology without invoking dark matter. In this work we consider the strong gravity regime of TeVeS. We study spherically symmetric, static and vacuum spacetimes relevant for a non-rotating black hole or the exterior of a star. Two branches of solutions are identified: in the first the vector field is aligned with the time direction while in the second the vector field has a non-vanishing radial component. We show that in the first branch of solutions the \beta and \gamma PPN coefficients in TeVeS are identical to these of general relativity (GR) while in the second the \beta PPN coefficient differs from unity violating observational determinations of it (for the choice of the free function $F$ of the theory made in Bekenstein's paper). For the first branch of solutions, we derive analytic expressions for the physical metric and discuss their implications. Applying these solutions to the case of black holes, it is shown that they violate causality (since they allow for superluminal propagation of metric, vector and scalar waves) in the vicinity of the event horizon and/or that they are characterized by negative energy density carried by the fields.Comment: 12 pages, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Prompt Gamma Ray Burst emission from gradual magnetic dissipation

We considered a model for the prompt phase of Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) emission arising from a magnetized jet undergoing gradual energy dissipation due to magnetic reconnection. The dissipated magnetic energy is translated to bulk kinetic energy and to acceleration of particles. The energy in these particles is released via synchrotron radiation as they gyrate around the strong magnetic fields in the jet. At small radii, the optical depth is large, and the radiation is reprocessed through Comptonization into a narrow, strongly peaked, component. At larger distances the optical depth becomes small and radiation escapes the jet with a non-thermal distribution. The obtained spectra typically peak around $\approx 300$keV (as observed) and with spectral indices below and above the peak that are, for a broad range of the model parameters, close to the observed values. The small radius of dissipation causes the emission to become self absorbed at a few keV and can sufficiently suppress the optical and X-ray fluxes within the limits required by observations (Beniamini & Piran 2014).Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. Published in MNRA