No Arabic abstract
Blazars - active galaxies with the jet pointing at Earth - emit across all electromagnetic wavelengths. The so-called one-zone model has described well both quiescent and flaring states, however it cannot explain the radio emission. In order to self-consistently describe the entire electromagnetic spectrum, extended jet models are necessary. Notably, kinetic descriptions of extended jets can provide the temporal and spatial evolution of the particle species and the full electromagnetic output. Here, we present the initial results of a recently developed hadronic extended-jet code. As protons take much longer than electrons to lose their energy, they can transport energy over much larger distances than electrons and are therefore essential for the energy transport in the jet. Furthermore, protons can inject additional leptons through pion and Bethe-Heitler pair production, which can explain a dominant leptonic radiation signal while still producing neutrinos. We will present a detailed parameter study and provide insights into the different blazar sub-classes.
Flaring activity in blazars can last for vastly different time-scales, and may be the result of density enhancements in the jet flow that result from the intrusion of an interstellar cloud into the jet. We investigate the lightcurves expected from the ablation of gas clouds by the blazar jet under various cloud and jet configurations. We derive the semi-analytical formulae describing the ablation process of a hydrostatic cloud, and perform parameter scans of artificial set-ups over both cloud and jet parameter spaces. We then use parameters obtained from measurements of various cloud types to produce lightcurves of these cloud examples. The parameter scans show that a vast zoo of symmetrical lightcurves can be realized. Both cloud and emission region parameters significantly influence the duration, and strength of the flare. The scale height of the cloud is one of the most important parameters, as it determines the shape of the lightcurve. In turn, important cloud parameters can be deduced from the observed shape of a flare. The example clouds result in significant flares lasting for various time scales.
In this paper we propose a way to use optical polarisation observations to provide independent constraints and guide to the modelling of the spectral energy distribution (SED) of blazars, which is particularly useful when two-zone models are required to fit the observed SED. As an example, we apply the method to the 2008 multiwavelength campaign of PKS 2155-304, for which the required polarisation information was already available. We find this approach succesful in being able to simultaneously describe the SED and variability of the source, otherwise difficult to interpret. More generally, by using polarisation data to disentangle different active regions within the source, the method reveals otherwise unseen correlations in the multiwavelength behaviour which are key for the SED modelling.
We report on the acceleration properties of 329 features in 95 blazar jets from the MOJAVE VLBA program. Nearly half the features and three-quarters of the jets show significant changes in speed and/or direction. In general, apparent speed changes are distinctly larger than changes in direction, indicating that changes in the Lorentz factors of jet features dominate the observed speed changes rather than bends along the line of sight. Observed accelerations tend to increase the speed of features near the jet base, $lesssim 10-20$ parsecs projected, and decrease their speed at longer distances. The range of apparent speeds at fixed distance in an individual jet can span a factor of a few, indicating that shock properties and geometry may influence the apparent motions; however, we suggest that the broad trend of jet features increasing their speed near the origin is due to an overall acceleration of the jet flow out to de-projected distances of order $10^2$ parsecs, beyond which the flow begins to decelerate or remains nearly constant in speed. We estimate intrinsic rates of change of the Lorentz factors in the galaxy frame of order $dot{Gamma}/Gamma simeq 10^{-3}$ to $10^{-2}$ per year which can lead to total Lorentz factor changes of a factor of a few on the length scales observed here. Finally, we also find evidence for jet collimation at projected distances of $lesssim 10$ parsecs in the form of the non-radial motion and bending accelerations that tend to better align features with the inner jet.
In this paper, we investigate the acceleration in relativistic jets of high-energy proton preaccelerated in the magnetosphere of a supermassive black hole. The proton reaches maximum energy when passing the total potential difference of $U$ between the jet axis and its periphery. This voltage is created by a rotating black hole and transmitted along magnetic field lines into the jet. It is shown that the trajectories of proton in the jet are divided into three groups: untrapped, trapped and not accelerated. Untrapped particles are not kept by poloidal and toroidal magnetic fields inside the jet, so they escape out the jet and their energy is equal to the maximum value, $eU$. Trapped protons are moving along the jet with oscillations in the radial direction. Their energy varies around the value of $0.74 eU$. In a strong magnetic field protons preaccelerated in the magnetosphere are pressed to the jet axis and practically are not accelerated in the jet. The work defines acceleration regimes for a range of the most well-known AGN objects with relativistic jets and for the microquasar SS433.
Extreme high-energy peaked BL Lac objects (EHBLs) are blazars whose synchrotron emission peaks at exceptionally high energies, above few keV, in the hard X-ray regime. So far, only a handful of those objects has been detected at very high energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) gamma rays by Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. Very remarkably, VHE observations of some of these blazars (like 1ES 0229+200) have provided evidence of a VHE gamma-ray emission extending to several TeV, which is difficult to explain with standard, one-zone synchrotron self-Compton models usually applied to BL Lac objects. The MAGIC collaboration coordinated a multi-year, multi-wavelength observational campaign on ten targets. The MAGIC telescopes detected VHE gamma rays from four EHBLs. In this paper we focus on the source 1ES 1426+426 and its X-ray and VHE gamma-ray properties. The results of different models (synchrotron self-Compton, spine-layer, hadronic) reproducing the broadband spectral energy distribution are also presented.