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Register a new userOn the origin of the gamma-ray/optical lags in luminous blazars
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Blazars are strongly variable sources that occasionally show spectacular flares visible in various energy bands. These flares are often, but not always, correlated. In a number of cases the peaks of optical flares are found to be somewhat delayed with respect to the gamma-ray peaks. One notable example of such a delay was found in 3C 279 by Hayashida et al. and interpreted as a result of steeper drop with distance of the energy density of external radiation field than of the magnetic energy density. In this paper we demonstrate that in general, depending on the respective energy density profile along the jet, such lags can have both signs and that they can take place for any ratio of these energy densities. We study the dependence of such lags on the ratio of these energy densities at a distance of a maximal energy dissipation in a jet, on their gradients, as well as on the time profile of the relativistic electron injection within the moving source. We show how prominent such lags can be, and what are their expected time scales. We suggest that studies of such lags can provide a powerful tool to resolve the structure of relativistic jets and their radiative environment. As an example we model the lag observed in 3C 279, showing that in this object the flare is produced at a distance of a few parsecs from the central black hole, consistent with our previous inferences based on the spectra and optical polarization properties.
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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.
Locating the gamma-ray emission sites in blazar jets is a long-standing and highly controversial issue. We investigate jointly several constraints on the distance scale r and Lorentz factor Gamma of the gamma-ray emitting regions in luminous blazars (primarily flat spectrum radio quasars, FSRQs). Working in the framework of one-zone external radiation Comptonization (ERC) models, we perform a parameter space study for several representative cases of actual gamma-ray flares in their multiwavelength context. We find a particularly useful combination of three constraints: from an upper limit on the collimation parameter Gamma*theta <~ 1, from an upper limit on the synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) luminosity L_SSC <~ L_X, and from an upper limit on the efficient cooling photon energy E_cool,obs <~ 100 MeV. These three constraints are particularly strong for sources with low accretion disk luminosity L_d. The commonly used intrinsic pair-production opacity constraint on Gamma is usually much weaker than the SSC constraint. The SSC and cooling constraints provide a robust lower limit on the collimation parameter Gamma*theta >~ 0.1 - 0.7. Typical values of r corresponding to moderate values of Gamma ~ 20 are in the range 0.1 - 1 pc, and are determined primarily by the observed variability time scale t_var,obs. Alternative scenarios motivated by the observed gamma-ray/mm connection, in which gamma-ray flares of t_var,obs ~ a few days are located at r ~ 10 pc, are in conflict with both the SSC and cooling constraints. Moreover, we use a simple light travel time argument to point out that the gamma-ray/mm connection does not provide a significant constraint on the location of gamma-ray flares. We argue that spine-sheath models of the jet structure do not offer a plausible alternative to external radiation fields at large distances, however, an extended broad-line region is an idea worth exploring.
We present centimeter-band total flux density and linear polarization light curves illustrating the signature of shocks during radio band outbursts associated in time with gamma-ray flares detected by the Fermi LAT. The general characteristics of the spectral evolution during these events is well-explained by new radiative transfer simulations incorporating propagating oblique shocks and assuming an initially turbulent magnetic field. This finding supports the idea that oblique shocks in the jet are a viable explanation for activity from the radio to the gamma-ray band in at least some gamma-ray flares.
We present average R-band optopolarimetric data, as well as variability parameters, from the first and second RoboPol observing season. We investigate whether gamma- ray--loud and gamma-ray--quiet blazars exhibit systematic differences in their optical polarization properties. We find that gamma-ray--loud blazars have a systematically higher polarization fraction (0.092) than gamma-ray--quiet blazars (0.031), with the hypothesis of the two samples being drawn from the same distribution of polarization fractions being rejected at the 3{sigma} level. We have not found any evidence that this discrepancy is related to differences in the redshift distribution, rest-frame R-band lu- minosity density, or the source classification. The median polarization fraction versus synchrotron-peak-frequency plot shows an envelope implying that high synchrotron- peaked sources have a smaller range of median polarization fractions concentrated around lower values. Our gamma-ray--quiet sources show similar median polarization fractions although they are all low synchrotron-peaked. We also find that the random- ness of the polarization angle depends on the synchrotron peak frequency. For high synchrotron-peaked sources it tends to concentrate around preferred directions while for low synchrotron-peaked sources it is more variable and less likely to have a pre- ferred direction. We propose a scenario which mediates efficient particle acceleration in shocks and increases the helical B-field component immediately downstream of the shock.
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