GAMMA-RAY STUDIES OF BLAZARS: SYNCHRO-COMPTON ANALYSIS OF FLAT SPECTRUM RADIO QUASARS
By C. Dermer, J. Finke, H. Krug, M. Boettcher. 2008
152 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We extend a method for modeling synchrotron and synchrotron self-Compton radiations in blazar jets to include external Compton (EC) processes. The basic model assumption is that the blazar radio through soft X-ray flux is nonthermal synchrotron radiation emitted by isotropically distributed electrons in the randomly directed magnetic field of outflowing relativistic blazar jet plasma. Thus, the electron distribution is given by the synchrotron spectrum, depending only on the Doppler factor δD and the mean magnetic field B, given that the comoving emission region size scale R′b ≲ cδDtv/(1 + z), where tv is the variability time and z is the source redshift. Generalizing the approach of Georganopoulos, Kirk, & Mastichiadis to arbitrary anisotropic target radiation fields, we use the electron spectrum implied by the synchrotron component to derive accurate Compton-scattered γ-ray spectra throughout the Thomson and Klein–Nishina regimes for EC scattering processes. We derive and calculate accurate γ-ray spectra produced by relativistic electrons that Compton-scatter (1) a point source of radiation located radially behind the jet, (2) photons from a thermal Shakura–Sunyaev accretion disk, and (3) target photons from the central source scattered by a spherically symmetric shell of broad-line region gas. The calculations of broadband spectral energy distributions from the radio through γ-ray regimes are presented, which include self-consistent γγ absorption on the same radiation fields that provide target photons for Compton scattering. The application of this baseline flat spectrum radio/γ-ray quasar model is considered in view of data from γ-ray telescopes and contemporaneous multiwavelength campaigns.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f05b2f4332e6bcc3c0faba338e0f8838c90327a1
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Citations in the corpus
- Canonical high power blazars (2009, background): “The paper more german to our is Dermer et al. (2009), but we include some new ingredients.”
- PROBING THE INNER JET OF THE QUASAR PKS 1510−089 WITH MULTI-WAVEBAND MONITORING DURING STRONG GAMMA-RAY ACTIVITY (2010, background): “…was close to the base of the jet, electrons in the jet could have scattered the broad emission-line region or accretion-disk photons to γ-ray energies as the disturbance first became optically thin to photon-photon pair production (see, e.g., Ghisellini & Tavecchio 2009; Dermer et al. 2009).”