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Register a new userHadronic X-ray Flares from Blazars
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The detection of a high-energy neutrino from the flaring blazar TXS 0506+056 and the subsequent discovery of a neutrino excess from the same direction have strengthened the hypothesis that blazars are cosmic neutrino sources. The lack, however, of $gamma$-ray flaring activity during the latter period challenges the standard scenario of correlated $gamma$-ray and high-energy neutrino emission in blazars. We propose instead that TeV-PeV neutrinos are produced in coincidence with X-ray flares that are powered by proton synchrotron radiation. In this case, neutrinos are produced by photomeson interactions of protons with their own synchrotron radiation, while MeV to GeV $gamma$-rays are the result of synchrotron-dominated electromagnetic cascades developed in the source. Using a time-dependent approach, we find that this pure hadronic flaring hypothesis has several interesting consequences. The X-ray flux is a good proxy for the all-flavor neutrino flux, while certain neutrino-rich X-ray flares may be dark in GeV-TeV $gamma$-rays. Lastly, hadronic X-ray flares are accompanied by an equally bright MeV component that is detectable by proposed missions like e-ASTROGAM and AMEGO. We then applied this scenario to the extreme blazar 3HSP J095507.9+355101 that has been associated with IceCube-200107A while undergoing an X-ray flare. We showed that the number of muon and antimuon neutrinos above 100 TeV during hadronic flares can be up to $sim3-10$ times higher than the expected number in standard leptohadronic models. Still, frequent hadronic flaring activity is necessary for explaining the detected neutrino event IceCube-200107A.
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I present a systematic study of gamma-ray flares in blazars. For this purpose, I propose a very simple and practical definition of a flare as a period of time, associated with a given flux peak, during which the flux is above half of the peak flux. I select a sample of 40 brightest gamma-ray flares observed by Fermi/LAT during the first 4 years of its mission. The sample is dominated by 4 blazars: 3C 454.3, PKS 1510-089, PKS 1222+216 and 3C 273. For each flare, I calculate a light curve and variations of the photon index. For the whole sample, I study the distributions of the peak flux, peak luminosity, duration, time asymmetry, average photon index and photon index scatter. I find that: 1) flares produced by 3C 454.3 are longer and have more complex light curves than those produced by other blazars; 2) flares shorter than 1.5 days in the source frame tend to be time-asymmetric with the flux peak preceding the flare midpoint. These differences can be largely attributed to a smaller viewing angle of 3C 454.3 as compared to other blazars. Intrinsically, the gamma-ray emitting regions in blazar jets may be structured and consist of several domains. I find no regularity in the spectral gamma-ray variations of flaring blazars.
Blazars radiate from relativistic plasma jets with bulk Lorentz factors {Gamma} ~ 10, closely aligned along our line of sight. In a number of blazars of the Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar type such as 3C 454.3 and 3C 279 gamma-ray flares have recently been detected with very high luminosity and little or no counterparts in the optical and soft X-ray bands. They challenge the current one-zone leptonic models of emissions from within the broad line region. The latter envisage the optical/X-ray emissions to be produced as synchrotron radiation by the same population of highly relativistic electrons in the jet that would also yield the gamma rays by inverse Compton up-scattering of surrounding soft photons. To meet the challenge we present here a model based on primary synchrotron photons emitted in the broad line region by a plasmoid moving out with the jet and scattered back toward the incoming plasmoid by an outer plasma clump acting as a mirror. We consider both a scenario based on a static mirror located outside the BLR, and an alternative provided by a moving mirror geometry. We show that mirroring phenomena can locally enhance the density and anisotropy with associated relativistic boosting of soft photons within the jet, so as to trigger bright inverse Compton gamma-ray transients from nearly steady optical/X-ray synchrotron emissions. In this picture we interpret the peculiarly asymmetric lightcurves of the recently detected gamma-ray flares from 3C 279. Our scenario provides a promising start to understand the widening class of bright and transient gamma-ray activities in blazars.
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 investigate the spectral properties of the brightest gamma-ray flares of blazars detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope. We search for the presence of spectral breaks and measure the spectral curvature on typical time scales of a few days. We identify significant spectral breaks in fewer than half of the analyzed flares, but their parameters do not show any discernible regularities, and in particular there is no indication for gamma-ray absorption at any fixed source-frame photon energy. More interestingly, we find that the studied blazars are characterized by significant spectral variability. Gamma-ray flares of short duration are often characterized by strong spectral curvature, with the spectral peak located above 100 MeV. Since these spectral variations are observed despite excellent photon statistics, they must reflect temporal fluctuations in the energy distributions of the emitting particles. We suggest that highly regular gamma-ray spectra of blazars integrated over long time scales emerge from a superposition of many short-lived irregular components with relatively narrow spectra. This would imply that the emitting particles are accelerated in strongly turbulent environments.
We study the expected variability patterns of blazars within the two-zone acceleration model putting special emphasis on flare shapes and spectral lags. We solve semi-analytically the kinetic equations which describe the particle evolution in the acceleration and radiation zone. We then perturb the solutions by introducing Lorentzian variations in its key parameters and examine the flaring behavior of the system. We apply the above to the X-ray observations of blazar 1ES 1218+304 which exhibited a hard lag behavior during a flaring episode and discuss possibilities of producing it within the context of our model. The steady-state radio to X-rays emission of 1ES 1218+304 can be reproduced with parameters which lie well within the ones generally accepted from blazar modeling. Additionally, we find that the best way to explain its flaring behavior is by varying the rate of particles injected in the acceleration zone.
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