LEPTONIC AND HADRONIC MODELING OF FERMI-DETECTED BLAZARS

By M. Böttcher, A. Reimer, K. Sweeney, A. Prakash. 2013

459 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We describe new implementations of leptonic and hadronic models for the broadband emission from relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei in a temporary steady state. For the leptonic model, a temporary equilibrium between particle injection/acceleration, radiative cooling, and escape from a spherical emission region is evaluated, and the self-consistent radiative output is calculated. For the hadronic model, a temporary equilibrium between particle injection/acceleration, radiative and adiabatic cooling, and escape is evaluated for both primary electrons and protons. A new, semianalytical method to evaluate the radiative output from cascades initiated by internal γγ pair production is presented. We use our codes to fit snapshot spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of a representative set of Fermi-LAT-detected blazars. We find that the leptonic model provides acceptable fits to the SEDs of almost all blazars with parameters close to equipartition between the magnetic field and the relativistic electron population. However, the hard γ-ray spectrum of AO 0235+164, in contrast to the very steep IR–optical–UV continuum, poses a severe problem for the leptonic model. If charge neutrality in leptonic models is provided by cold protons, the kinetic energy carried by the jet should be dominated by protons. We find satisfactory representations of the snapshot SEDs of most blazars in our sample with the hadronic model presented here. However, in the case of two quasars the characteristic break at a few GeV energies cannot be well modeled. All of our hadronic model fits require powers in relativistic protons in the range Lp ∼ 1047–1049 erg s−1.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7c9d6b9a5e54d102bfac9b1a831c46648a7d58e5

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

A hadronic origin for ultra-high-frequency-peaked BL Lac objects (2014, methodology): “For a recent modeling attempt of Fermi-LAT blazars in both leptonic and hadronic scenarios, see Böttcher et al. (2013).”
Relativistic Jets Shine through Shocks or Magnetic Reconnection (2015, background): “…jet emission has to account for the fact that both blazars and GRBs are characterized by (i) alarge 3 In hadronic models for the gamma-ray emission from blazars,the required maximum Lorentz factor of protons may be even more extreme (Aharonian 2000; Böttcher et al. 2013; Petropoulou et al. 2015).”