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تسجيل مستخدم جديدAn Emerging Class of Gamma-Ray Flares from Blazars: Beyond One-Zone Models
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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.
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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.
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amma$-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.
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
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