Comptonization of Infrared Radiation from Hot Dust by Relativistic Jets in Quasars

By M. Błażejowski, M. Sikora, R. Moderski, G. Madejski. 2000

342 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We demonstrate the importance of near-infrared radiation from hot dust for Compton cooling of electrons/positrons in quasar jets. In our model, we assume that the nonthermal radiation spectra observed in optically violent variable (OVV) quasars are produced by relativistic electrons/positrons accelerated in thin shells that propagate down the jet with relativistic speeds. We show that the Comptonization of the near-IR flux is likely to dominate the radiative output of OVV quasars in the energy range from tens of keV up to hundreds of MeV, where it exceeds that produced by Comptonization of the UV radiation reprocessed and rescattered in the broad emission line (BEL) region. The main reason for this lies in the fact that the jet encounters the ambient IR radiation over a relatively large distance as compared to the distance where the energy density of the BEL light peaks. In the soft to mid-energy X-ray band, the spectral component resulting from Comptonization of the near-IR radiation joins smoothly with the synchrotron self-Compton component, which may be responsible for the soft X-ray flux. At the highest observed γ-ray energies, in the GeV range, Comptonization of broad emission lines dominates over other components.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c8157cc974342bcc5937fce3d9a245dba4ff08f3

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

1. G. Ghisellini
2. F. Tavecchio
3. Bing Zhang
4. L. Maraschi
5. Luigi Foschini
6. F. Ryde
7. Y. Kovalev
8. G. Ghirlanda

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. F. Tavecchio
2. G. Ghisellini
3. L. Maraschi
4. Luigi Foschini
5. C. Dermer
6. Y. Kovalev
7. G. Ghirlanda
8. M. Lister

Citations in the corpus

• GeV BREAKS IN BLAZARS AS A RESULT OF GAMMA-RAY ABSORPTION WITHIN THE BROAD-LINE REGION (2010, background): “As a source of photons, the dust emission at 10 pc scale (Błażejowski et al. 2000; Sikora et al. 2008) cannot be important.”
• RADIO-LOUD NARROW-LINE SEYFERT 1 AS A NEW CLASS OF GAMMA-RAY ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2009, background): “The seed photons for the latter are the sum of several contributions: photons directly radiated from the accretion disk (Dermer & Schlickeiser 1993), from the broad-line region (BLR,61 Sikora et al. 1994) and from the infrared torus (Błażejowski et al. 2000; Sikora et al. 2002).”
• Relativistic beaming and gamma-ray brightness of blazars (2009, background): “The seed photons can also originate in sources external to the jet like the accretion disk, the broad line region clouds or the dust torus (external Compton model; Dermer et al. 1992; Ghisellini & Madau 1996; Sikora et al. 1994; Błażejowski et al. 2000).”
• Canonical high power blazars (2009, background): “We also assume the presence of a torus (see Błazejowski et al. 2000; Sikora et al. 2002), at a distance RIR = 2.5 × 10 18 L 1/2 d,45 cm (3) c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS000, 000–000 reprocessing a fractionfIR of the disk radiation in the infrared.”
• General physical properties of bright Fermi blazars (2009, background): “…to the jet, we in fact consider radiation coming directly from the disk (i.e. Dermer & Schlickeiser 1993), the broad line region (BLR; e.g. Sikora, Begelman & Rees 1994), a dusty torus (see Błazejowski et al. 2000; Sikora et al. 2002), the host galaxy light and the cosmic background radiation.”
• LEPTONIC AND HADRONIC MODELING OF FERMI-DETECTED BLAZARS (2013, background): “The high-energy emission is then most plausibly explained by Compton scattering of low-energy photons by the same electrons producing the synchrotron emission at lower frequencies (Maraschi et al. 1992; Bloom & Marscher 1996; Dermer & Schlickeiser 1993; Sikora et al. 1994; Blaz̈ejowski et al. 2000).”