74 research outputs found
Are Quasar Jets Matter or Poynting Flux Dominated?
If quasar jets are accelerated by magnetic fields but terminate as matter
dominated, where and how does the transition occur between the
Poynting-dominated and matter-dominated regimes? To address this question, we
study constraints which are imposed on the jet structure by observations at
different spatial scales. We demonstrate that observational data are consistent
with a scenario where the acceleration of a jet occurs within 10^{3-4} R_g. In
this picture, the non-thermal flares -- important defining attributes of the
blazar phenomenon - are produced by strong shocks formed in the region where
the jet inertia becomes dominated by matter. Such shocks may be formed due to
collisions between the portions of a jet accelerated to different velocities,
and the acceleration differentiation is very likely to be related to global MHD
instabilities.Comment: to appear in "Astrophysical Sources of High Energy Particles and
Radiation", AIP Proceedings Series, eds. T. Bulik, G. Madejski, and B. Rudak
(20-24 June 2005, Torun, Poland
On the origin of X-ray spectra in luminous blazars
Gamma-ray luminosities of some quasar-associated blazars imply jet powers
reaching values comparable to the accretion power even if assuming very strong
Doppler boosting and very high efficiency of gamma-ray production. With much
lower radiative efficiencies of protons than of electrons, and the recent
reports of very strong coupling of electrons with shock-heated protons
indicated by Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations, the leptonic models seem to be
strongly favored over the hadronic ones. However, the electron-proton coupling
combined with the ERC (External-Radiation-Compton) models of gamma-ray
production in leptonic models predict extremely hard X-ray spectra, with energy
indices about 0. This is inconsistent with the observed 2-10 keV slopes of
blazars, which cluster around an index value of 0.6. This problem can be
resolved by assuming that electrons can be cooled down radiatively to
non-relativistic energies, or that blazar spectra are entirely dominated by the
SSC (Synchrotron-Self Compton) component up to at least 10 keV. Here, we show
that the required cooling can be sufficiently efficient only at distances r <
0.03pc. SSC spectra, on the other hand, can be produced roughly co-spatially
with the observed synchrotron and ERC components, which are most likely located
roughly at a parsec scale. We show that the dominant SSC component can also be
produced much further than the dominant synchrotron and ERC components, at
distances larger than 10 parsecs. Hence, depending on the spatial distribution
of the energy dissipation along the jet, one may expect to see
gamma-ray/optical events with either correlated or uncorrelated X-rays. In all
cases the number of electron-positron pairs per proton is predicted to be very
low. The direct verification of the proposed SSC scenario requires sensitive
observations in the hard X-ray band which is now possible with the NuSTAR
satellite.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Ap
Herschel PACS and SPIRE observations of blazar PKS 1510-089: a case for two blazar zones
We present the results of observations of blazar PKS 1510-089 with the
Herschel Space Observatory PACS and SPIRE instruments, together with
multiwavelength data from Fermi/LAT, Swift, SMARTS and SMA. The source was
found in a quiet state, and its far-infrared spectrum is consistent with a
power-law with a spectral index of alpha ~ 0.7. Our Herschel observations were
preceded by two 'orphan' gamma-ray flares. The near-infrared data reveal the
high-energy cut-off in the main synchrotron component, which cannot be
associated with the main gamma-ray component in a one-zone leptonic model. This
is because in such a model the luminosity ratio of the External-Compton and
synchrotron components is tightly related to the frequency ratio of these
components, and in this particular case an unrealistically high energy density
of the external radiation would be implied. Therefore, we consider a
well-constrained two-zone blazar model to interpret the entire dataset. In this
framework, the observed infrared emission is associated with the synchrotron
component produced in the hot-dust region at the supra-pc scale, while the
gamma-ray emission is associated with the External-Compton component produced
in the broad-line region at the sub-pc scale. In addition, the optical/UV
emission is associated with the accretion disk thermal emission, with the
accretion disk corona likely contributing to the X-ray emission.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 7 tables; accepted for publication in the
Astrophysical Journa
3C454.3 reveals the structure and physics of its 'blazar zone'
Recent multi-wavelength observations of 3C454.3, in particular during its
giant outburst in 2005, put severe constraints on the location of the 'blazar
zone', its dissipative nature, and high energy radiation mechanisms. As the
optical, X-ray, and millimeter light-curves indicate, significant fraction of
the jet energy must be released in the vicinity of the millimeter-photosphere,
i.e. at distances where, due to the lateral expansion, the jet becomes
transparent at millimeter wavelengths. We conclude that this region is located
at ~10 parsecs, the distance coinciding with the location of the hot dust
region. This location is consistent with the high amplitude variations observed
on ~10 day time scale, provided the Lorentz factor of a jet is ~20. We argue
that dissipation is driven by reconfinement shock and demonstrate that X-rays
and gamma-rays are likely to be produced via inverse Compton scattering of
near/mid IR photons emitted by the hot dust. We also infer that the largest
gamma-to-synchrotron luminosity ratio ever recorded in this object - having
taken place during its lowest luminosity states - can be simply due to weaker
magnetic fields carried by a less powerful jet.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Variability Time Scales of TeV Blazars Observed in the ASCA Continuous Long-Look X-ray Monitoring
Three uninterrupted, long (lasting respectively 7, 10, and 10 days) ASCA
observations of the well-studied TeV-bright blazars Mrk 421, Mrk 501 and PKS
2155-304 all show continuous strong X-ray flaring. Despite the relatively faint
intensity states in 2 of the 3 sources, there was no identifiable quiescent
period in any of the observations. Structure function analysis shows that all
blazars have a characteristic time scale of ~ a day, comparable to the
recurrence time and to the time scale of the stronger flares. On the other
hand, examination of these flares in more detail reveals that each of the
strong flares is not a smooth increase and decrease, but exhibits substructures
of shorter flares having time scales of ~10 ks. We verify via simulations that
in order to explain the observed structure function, these shorter flares
("shots") are unlikely to be fully random, but in some way are correlated with
each other. The energy dependent cross-correlation analysis shows that
inter-band lags are not universal in TeV blazars. This is important since in
the past, only positive detections of lags were reported. In this work, we
determine that the sign of a lag may differ from flare to flare; significant
lags of both signs were detected from several flares, while no significant lag
was detected from others. However, we also argue that the nature of the
underlying component can affect these values. The facts that all flares are
nearly symmetric and that fast variability shorter than the characteristic time
scale is strongly suppressed, support the scenario where the light crossing
time dominates the variability time scales of the day-scale flares.Comment: 29 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
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