Fast TeV variability in blazars: jets in a jet

By D. Giannios, Dmitri A. Uzdensky, M. Begelman. 2009

417 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The fast TeV variability of the blazars Mrk 501 and PKS 2155−304 implies a compact emitting region that moves with a bulk Lorentz factor of Γem∼ 100 towards the observer. The Lorentz factor is clearly in excess of the jet Lorentz factors Γj≲ 10 measured on sub-pc scales in these sources. We propose that the TeV emission originates from compact emitting regions that move relativistically within a jet of bulk Γj∼ 10. This can be physically realized in a Poynting flux-dominated jet. We show that if a large fraction of the luminosity of the jet is prone to magnetic dissipation through reconnection, then material outflowing from the reconnection regions can efficiently power the observed TeV flares through synchrotron-self-Compton emission. The model predicts simultaneous far-ultraviolet/soft X-ray flares.

Subfields: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5fc702b0b2dd79d9eeee5b89d6387d936fddbf2c

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In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. D. Giannios
2. L. Sironi
3. Bing Zhang
4. A. Spitkovsky
5. M. Petropoulou
6. A. Marscher
7. F. Tavecchio
8. B. Cerutti

Citations in the corpus

• TURBULENT, EXTREME MULTI-ZONE MODEL FOR SIMULATING FLUX AND POLARIZATION VARIABILITY IN BLAZARS (2013, background): “Magnetic reconnections have been proposed as an alternative to shocks as a primary process for accelerating electrons, causing relativistic bulk motions of plasma, and therefore generating flares (e.g., Giannios et al. 2009).”
• MINUTE-TIMESCALE >100 MeV γ-RAY VARIABILITY DURING THE GIANT OUTBURST OF QUASAR 3C 279 OBSERVED BY FERMI-LAT IN 2015 JUNE (2016, background): “Relativistic reconnection can also produce relativistic outflws dubbed ‘minijets’, which can provide additional local Lorentz boost (Giannios et al. 2009).”
• PARTICLE ACCELERATION AND PLASMA DYNAMICS DURING MAGNETIC RECONNECTION IN THE MAGNETICALLY DOMINATED REGIME (2015, background): “Explaining the fast variability requires the relativistic beaming effect possibly arising from relativistic reconnection outflows (Giannios et al. 2009; Deng et al. 2015).”
• THE INTERNAL-COLLISION-INDUCED MAGNETIC RECONNECTION AND TURBULENCE (ICMART) MODEL OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2010, background): “The data demand some smallscale enhanced emission units (Begelman et al. 2008; Giannios et al. 2009).”
• Plasmoids in relativistic reconnection, from birth to adulthood: first they grow, then they go (2016, background): “…Kirk & Skjæraasen 2003; Pétri & Lyubarsky 2007; Sironi & Spitkovsky 2011a), jets from active galactic nuclei (AGNs; e.g.,Romanova & Lovelace 1992; Giannios et al. 2009, 2010; Giannios 2013) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs; e.g.,Thompson 1994, 2006; Usov 1994; Spruit et al. 2001; Drenkhahn & Spruit…”
• Relativistic Jets Shine through Shocks or Magnetic Reconnection (2015, background): “On the one hand, there is a strong theoretical motivation to consider them as magnetically-dominated objects at their base (Blandford & Znajek 1977; Blandford & Payne 1982).”
• Non-thermal particle acceleration in collisionless relativistic electron-proton reconnection (2016, background): “Such ‘minijets’ could represent outflow regions from relativistic reconnection sites (Giannios et al. 2009; Nalewajko et al. 2011), with local values of σi several times larger than the mean.”
• RELATIVISTIC RECONNECTION: AN EFFICIENT SOURCE OF NON-THERMAL PARTICLES (2014, background): “…& Kirk 2001; Lyubarsky 2003; Kirk & Skjæraasen 2003; Pétri & Lyubarsky 2007), jets from active galactic nuclei (AGNs; Romanova & Lovelace 1992; Giannios et al. 2009; Giannios 2013) and gammaray bursts (GRBs; Thompson 1994, 2006; Spruit et al. 2001; Lyutikov & Blandford 2003; Giannios 2008).”
• SIMULATIONS OF PARTICLE ACCELERATION BEYOND THE CLASSICAL SYNCHROTRON BURNOFF LIMIT IN MAGNETIC RECONNECTION: AN EXPLANATION OF THE CRAB FLARES (2013, background): “Relativistic bulk outflows with Lorentz factor of order Γ ∼ √σ = 4 are expected in relativistic Petschek reconnection (Lyubarsky 2005), and lead to a Doppler amplification of the observed emission (Giannios et al. 2009, 2010; Nalewajko et al. 2011; Clausen-Brown & Lyutikov 2012; Giannios 2013).”
• MAGIC DISCOVERY OF VERY HIGH ENERGY EMISSION FROM THE FSRQ PKS 1222+21 (2011, background): “…to invoke the presence of very compact emission regions embedded within the large scale jet, as already proposed by several authors to explain the exceptionally rapid variability in PKS 2155-304, Mkn 501 and AO 0235+164 (Ghisellini & Tavecchio 2008; Giannios et al. 2009; Marscher & Jorstad 2010).”
• INSIGHTS INTO THE HIGH-ENERGY γ-RAY EMISSION OF MARKARIAN 501 FROM EXTENSIVE MULTIFREQUENCY OBSERVATIONS IN THE FERMI ERA (2011, background): “Some first attempts to approach this problem in a more quantitative way have been already dis- – 39 – cussed in the literature (e.g. Ghisellini et al. 2005; Katarzyński et al. 2008; Graff et al. 2008; Giannios et al. 2009).”
• FROM THE BLAZAR SEQUENCE TO THE BLAZAR ENVELOPE: REVISITING THE RELATIVISTIC JET DICHOTOMY IN RADIO-LOUD ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2011, background): “…factors (∼ 50 or greater) must be invoked to explain the brightness and rapid variability of TeV blazars, as the jet must be highly relativistic in order to avoid absorption by co-spatial IR photons (Dondi & Ghisellini 1995; Aharonian et al. 2007; Ghisellini et al. 2009; Giannios et al. 2009).”
• Reconnection-driven plasmoids in blazars: fast flares on a slow envelope (2012, methodology): “Rarefaction waves in magnetized shells (Lyutikov & Lister 2010), relativistic turbulence in the jet (Narayan & Piran 2012) or reconnection-driven minijets (Giannios et al. 2009) may also be responsible for the fast flares.”