Fermi Gamma ray Space Telescope measurements of spectra, variability time scale, and maximum photon energy give lower limits to the apparent jet powers and, through gammagamma opacity arguments, the bulk Lorentz factors of relativistic jets. The maximum cosmic-ray particle energy is limited by these two quantities in Fermi acceleration scenarios. Recent data are used to constrain the maximum energies of cosmic-ray protons and Fe nuclei accelerated in colliding shells of GRBs and blazars. The Fermi results indicate that Fe rather than protons are more likely to be accelerated to ultra-high energies in AGNs, whereas powerful GRBs can accelerate both protons and Fe to >~ 10^{20} eV. Emissivity of nonthermal radiation from radio galaxies and blazars is estimated from the First Fermi AGN Catalog, and shown to favor BL Lac objects and FR1 radio galaxies over flat spectrum radio quasars, FR2 radio galaxies, and long-duration GRBs as the sources of UHECRs.
The jet composition and energy dissipation mechanism of Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and Blazars are fundamental questions which remain not fully understood. One plausible model is to interpret the $γ$-ray emission of GRBs and optical emission of blazars as synchrotron radiation of electrons accelerated from the collision-induced magnetic dissipation regions in Poynting-flux-dominated jets. The polarization observation is an important and independent information to test this model. Based on our recent 3D relativistic MHD simulations of collision-induced magnetic dissipation of magnetically dominate…
We compile 23 Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) and 21 blazars with estimated Doppler factors, and the Doppler factors of GRBs are estimated from their Lorentz factors by assuming their jet viewing angles θ->0 degree. Using the conventional assumption that the prompt emission of GRBs is dominated by the synchrotron radiation, we calculate the synchrotron luminosity of GRBs from their total isotropic energy and burst duration. Intriguingly, we discover a uniform correlation between the synchrotron luminosity and Doppler factor, L_syn \propto D^3.1, for GRBs and blazars, which suggests that they may share…
Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are powerful astrophysical events with relativistic jets. In this Letter the broadband spectral properties are compared between GRBs and the well-observed blazars. The distribution of GRBs are consistent with the well-known blazar sequence including the $νL_ν(5\rm GHz)-α_{\rm RX}$ and $νL_ν(5\rm GHz)-ν_{\rm peak}$ correlations, where $α_{\rm RX}$ is defined as the broadband spectral slope in radio-to-X-ray bands, and $ν_{\rm peak}$ is defined as the spectral peak frequency. Moreover, GRBs occupy the low radio luminosity end of these seq…
Both gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and blazars have relativistic jets pointing at a small angle from our line of sight. Several recent studies suggested that these two kinds of sources may share similar jet physics. In this work, we explore the variability properties for GRBs and blazars as a whole. We find that the correlation between minimum variability timescale (MTS) and Lorentz factor, $Γ$, as found only in GRBs by Sonbas et al. can be extended to blazars with a joint correlation of $\rm MTS\proptoΓ^{-4.7\pm0.3}$. The same applies to the $\rm MTS\propto \it L_γ^{\rm -1.0\pm0.1}$ correlation as …
A Universal Physics Defining the Radiation Spectra of Blazars and Gamma-Ray Bursts
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute（韩国天文与空间科学研究所）；University of Science and Technology（科学技术大学）；University of Hong Kong（香港大学）；Nevada Center for Astrophysics and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas（内华达大学拉斯维加斯分校天体物理中心及物理与天文学系）；NASA Goddard Space Flight Center（美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心）；Center for Space Science and Technology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County（马里兰大学巴尔的摩郡分校空间科学与技术中心）；Seoul National University（首尔大学）；Yonsei University（延世大学）
We present a spectral analysis for a sample of redshift known GRBs observed with {\em Fermi}/GBM. Together with the results derived from our systematical spectral energy distribution modeling with the leptonic models for a {\em Fermi}/LAT blazar sample, we compare the distributions of the GRBs and the blazars by plotting the synchrotron peak luminosity ($L_{\rm s}$) and the corresponding peak photon energy $E_{\rm s}$ of blazars in the $L_{\rm p}-E_{\rm p}$ plane of GRBs, where $L_{\rm p}$ and $E_{\rm p}$ are the peak luminosity and peak photon energy of the GRB time-integrated $νf_ν$ spectrum…
The peak frequencies of the two broad humps evident in the spectral energy density of blazars (SED) are time dependent and vary a lot between different blazars. However, their ratio in most blazars, appears to be almost universal and equal to $m_e c^2/4(1+z) ε_p$ to a good approximation, where $m_e$ is the electron mass, $ε_p$ is the peak energy of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and $z$ is the redshift of the blazar. We discuss a possible origin of such a universal ratio in blazars and gamma ray bursts (GRBs). We point out a possible connection between the knee in the energy spectr…
The detection of multi-TeV gamma-rays from the afterglow phase of GRB 190829A by High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) telescope is an addition to the already existing list of two more GRBs observed in the very high energy (VHE) gamma-rays in recent years. Jets of blazars and GRBs have many similarities and the photohadronic model is very successful in explaining the VHE gamma-ray spectra from the high energy blazars. Recently, the photohadronic model has been successfully applied to study the sub-TeV gamma-rays from the afterglow phases of GRB 180720B and GRB 190114C. We employed this mo…
A recent progress in the study of $γ$-ray jets is reviewed, with a focus on some theoretical interpretations of the VHE emission from M87, and possibly other misaligned blazars; the connection betwe en the GeV breaks exhibited by bright LAT blazars and opacity sources in the broad line region; the consequences of the detection of GeV emission from GRBs to models of magnetic outf lows; and the implications of the thermal emission observed is some GRBs to dissipation of the outflow bulk energy.
The impact of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on blazar research is reviewed. This includes a brief description of the Fermi Large Area Telescope, a summary of the various classes of extragalactic sources found in the First Large Area Telescope AGN Catalog, and more detailed discussion of the flat spectrum radio quasar 3C454.3 and the BL Lac object PKS 2155-304. Some theoretical studies related to ongoing blazar research with Fermi are mentioned, including implications of gamma-ray observations of radio galaxies on blazar unification scenarios, variability in colliding shells, and whether …
A checklist of criteria is presented to help establish the sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). These criteria are applied to long-duration GRBs in order to determine if they are UHECR sources. The evidence seems to favor blazars and radio galaxies (or other sources) over GRBs.
AGNs and GRBs produce powerful relativistic jets and their central engines share the same basic astrophysical ingredients, despite the vastly different mass scales. Using Fermi and Swift observations, we find evidence that the jets produced by blazars and GRBs follow the same correlation between the gamma-ray luminosity and kinetic power. This result suggests that jet production and energy dissipation mechanisms are remarkably similar over 10 orders of magnitude in jet power, establishing a physical analogy between AGN and GRBs. We discuss the implications of these results and the road ahead.
Mildly-relativistic shocks that are embedded in colliding magnetohydrodynamic flows are prime sites for relativistic particle acceleration and production of strongly variable, polarized multi-wavelength emission from relativistic jet sources such as blazars and gamma-ray bursts. The principal energization mechanisms at these shocks are diffusive shock acceleration and shock drift acceleration. In recent work, we had self-consistently coupled shock acceleration and radiation transfer simulations in blazar jets in a basic one-zone scenario. These one-zone models revealed that the observed spectr…
The extragalactic background light (EBL), from ultraviolet to infrared wavelengths, is predominantly due to emission from stars, accreting black holes and reprocessed light due to Galactic dust. The EBL can be studied through the imprint it leaves, via $γ$-$γ$ absorption of high-energy photons, in the spectra of distant $γ$-ray sources. The EBL has been probed through the search for the attenuation it produces in the spectra of BL Lacertae (BL Lac) objects and individual $γ$-ray bursts (GRBs). GRBs have significant advantages over blazars for the study of the EBL especially at high redshifts. …
The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) includes photons with wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared, which are effective at attenuating gamma rays with energy above ~10 GeV during propagation from sources at cosmological distances. This results in a redshift- and energy-dependent attenuation of the gamma-ray flux of extragalactic sources such as blazars and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). The Large Area Telescope onboard Fermi detects a sample of gamma-ray blazars with redshift up to z~3, and GRBs with redshift up to z~4.3. Using photons above 10 GeV collected by Fermi over more than one year of …
Five TeV neutrino events weakly correlated with five gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) were detected recently by IceCube. This work is an attempt to show that if the GRB identifications are verified, the observed time delays between the TeV neutrinos and gamma-ray photons from GRBs provide attractive candidates for testing fundamental physics with high accuracy. Based on the assumed associations between the TeV neutrinos and GRBs, we find that the limiting velocity of the neutrinos is equal to that of photons to an accuracy of $\sim1.9\times10^{-15}-2.5\times10^{-18}$, which is about $10^{4}-10^{7}$ tim…
We investigate the spectral and timing signatures of the internal-shock model for blazars. For this purpose, we develop a semi-analytical model for the time-dependent radiative output from internal shocks arising from colliding relativistic shells in a blazar jet. The emission through synchrotron and synchrotron-self Compton (SSC) radiation as well as Comptonization of an isotropic external radiation field are taken into account. We evaluate the discrete correlation function (DCF) of the model light curves in order to evaluate features of photon-energy dependent time lags and the quality of th…
We perform multi-wavelength light curve modeling of the recently discovered low-luminosity gamma-ray burst (GRB) 171205A. The emission model is based on the relativistic ejecta-circumstellar medium (CSM) interaction scenario. The collision of freely expanding spherical ejecta traveling at mildly relativistic velocities with the CSM produces the reverse and forward shocks, which dissipate a part of the kinetic energy of the mildly relativistic ejecta. We show that the early gamma-ray emission followed by an X-ray tail can be well explained by the radiation diffusing out from the shocked gas. Mi…
Common models of blazars and gamma-ray bursts assume that the plasma underlying the ob- served phenomenology is magnetized to some extent. Within this context, radiative signatures of dissipation of kinetic and conversion of magnetic energy in internal shocks of relativistic magnetized outflows are studied. We model internal shocks as being caused by collisions of homogeneous plasma shells. We compute the flow state after the shell interaction by solving Riemann problems at the contact surface between the colliding shells, and then compute the emission from the resulting shocks. Under the assu…
Black-hole driven relativistic astrophysical jets, such as blazars and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), are powerful sources of electromagnetic radiation. Their emission is powered by some energy dissipation and particle acceleration mechanism operating in-situ at large distances from the black hole. We propose that the formation of the dissipative structures in the jet is controlled by the time variability of the accretion disc. We argue that the open magnetic field lines through the black hole, which drive a strongly magnetized jet, may have their polarity reversing over time-scales related to the g…
We present the results of a multifrequency campaign from radio to hard X-ray energies on the blazar 3C 279 during an optical high-state in January 2006. We give the observational results (multifrequency light curves and spectra) and compile an SED. This complements an SED from an optical low-state in June 2003. Surprisingly the two SEDs differ only in their high-energy synchrotron emission (near-IR - UV), while the low-energy inverse-Compton emission (X- to Gamma-rays) remained unchanged. By interpreting with a steady-state leptonic emission model, the variability among the SED can be reproduc…
Over the past few decades impressive progress has been made in the field of photon polarimetry, especially in the hard X-ray and soft gamma-ray energy regime. Measurements of the linear degree of polarization for some of the most energetic astrophysical sources, such as Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) or Blazars, is now possible, at energies below the pair creation threshold. As such, a new window has been opened into understanding exact nature of the non-thermal emission mechanisms responsible for some of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe. There are still many open questions, and active de…
The delay in the arrival times between high and low energy photons from cosmic sources can be used to test the violation of the Lorentz invariance (LIV), predicted by some quantum gravity theories, and to constrain its characteristic energy scale ${\rm E_{QG}}$ that is of the order of the Planck energy. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and blazars are ideal for this purpose thanks to their broad spectral energy distribution and cosmological distances: at first order approximation, the constraints on ${\rm E_{QG}}$ are proportional to the photon energy separation and the distance of the source. However,…
Bright gamma-ray flares observed from sources far beyond our Galaxy are best explained if enormous amounts of energy are liberated by black holes. The highest-energy particles in nature--the ultra-high energy cosmic rays--cannot be confined by the Milky Way's magnetic field, and must originate from sources outside our Galaxy. Here we summarize the themes of our book, "High Energy Radiation from Black Holes: Gamma Rays, Cosmic Rays, and Neutrinos", just published by Princeton University Press. In this book, we develop a mathematical framework that can be used to help establish the nature of gam…
Fast magnetic reconnection events can be a very powerful mechanism operating in the core region of microquasars and AGNs. In earlier work, it has been suggested that the power released by fast reconnection events between the magnetic field lines lifting from the inner accretion disk region and the lines anchored into the central black hole could accelerate relativistic particles and produce the observed radio emission from microquasars and low luminosity AGNs (LLAGNs). Moreover, it has been proposed that the observed correlation between the radio emission and the mass of these sources, spannin…
In this paper, we demonstrate ASTRO-H's capability to measure the chemical evolution in the high-z (z <~ 3) universe by observing X-ray afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and distant Blazars. Utilizing these sources as background light sources, the excellent energy resolution of ASTRO-H/SXS allows us to detect emission and absorption features from heavy elements in the circumstellar material in the host galaxies, from the intergalactic medium (IGM) and in the ejecta of GRB explosions. In particular, we can constrain the existence of the warm-hot intergalactic material (WHIM), thought to con…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a next generation ground-based very-high-energy gamma-ray observatory that will allow for observations in the >10 GeV range with unprecedented photon statistics and sensitivity. This will enable the investigation of the yet-marginally explored physics of short-time-scale transient events. CTA will thus become an invaluable instrument for the study of the physics of the most extreme and violent objects and their interactions with the surrounding environment. The CTA Transient program includes follow-up observations of a wide range of multi-wavelength and m…
The IceCube collaboration has reported neutrinos with energies between ~30 TeV and a few PeV that are significantly enhanced over the cosmic-ray induced atmospheric background. Viable high-energy neutrino sources must contain very high-energy and ultra-high energy cosmic rays while efficiently making PeV neutrinos. Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) and blazars have been considered as candidate cosmic-ray accelerators. GRBs, including low-luminosity GRBs, can be efficient PeV neutrino emitters for low bulk Lorentz factor outflows, although the photopion production efficiency needs to be tuned to simultan…
Short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are believed to be produced by relativistic jets from mergers of neutron-stars (NS) or neutron-stars and black-holes (BH). If the Lorentz-factors $Γ$ of jets from compact-stellar-mergers follow a similar power-law distribution to those observed for other high-energy astrophysical phenomena (e.g. blazars, AGN), the population of jets would be dominated by low-$Γ$ outflows. These jets will not produce the prompt gamma-rays, but jet energy will be released as x-ray/optical/radio transients when they collide with the ambient medium. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we s…
Very high energy photons from cosmological gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are expected to interact with extragalactic background light (EBL) and produce electron-positron pairs when they propagate through intergalactic medium (IGM). These relativistic pairs will then up-scatter cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons and emit secondary GeV emission. Meanwhile, the motion of these pairs are deflected by intergalactic magnetic field (IGMF), so the secondary GeV photons arrive later than the primary emission. It has been suggested that the properties of the secondary GeV emission can be used to constr…
The origin of prompt emission in GRBs is not yet well understood. The simplest and most popular model is Synchrotron, Self-Compton (SSC) emission produced by internal shocks inside an ultra-relativistic jet. However, recent observations of a delayed high energy component have encouraged alternative models. Here we use a recently developed formulation of relativistic shocks to simulate GRBs. It takes into account the evolution of quantities such as densities of colliding shells, electric and magnetic fields. We also extend the previous formulation by considering a precessing external magnetic f…
The correlation between the kinetic power $P_{\rm jet}$ and intrinsic bolometric luminosity $L_{\rm jet}$ of jets may reveal the underlying jet physics in various black hole systems. Based on the recent work by Nemmen et al. (2012), we re-investigate this correlation with additional sources of black-hole X-ray binaries (BXBs) in hard/quiescent states and low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGNs). The new sample includes 29 sets of data from 7 BXBs and 20 LLAGNs, with $P_{\rm jet}$ and $L_{\rm jet}$ being derived from spectral modeling of the quasi-simultaneous multi-band spectra under the…
We attempt to explain the observed radio and gamma-ray emission produced in the surrounds of black holes by employing a magnetically-dominated accretion flow (MDAF) model and fast magnetic reconnection triggered by turbulence. In earlier work, standard disk model was used and we refine the model by focussing on the sub-Eddington regime to address the fundamental plane of black hole activity. The results do not change substantially with regard to previous work ensuring that the details of the accretion physics are not relevant in the magnetic reconnection process occurring in the corona. Rather…
In high energy astrophysics scenarios such as blazars, GRBs or PWNe, it is highly probable that ultra-relativistic particles interact with photons in their environment through scattering. As long as the energy of the particle is greater than the energy of the interacting photon, the (classical) scattering is known to be in the Thomson regime. Otherwise, quantum effects will affect the scattering cross section, and we enter into the so-called Klein-Nishina regime. It is well known that radiative cooling in the Thomson regime is very efficient, leading to soft high-energy spectra. However, obser…
Strong optical and radio flares often appear in the afterglow phase of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). It has been proposed that colliding ultra-relativistic shells can produce these flares. Such consecutive shells can be formed due to the variability in the central source of a GRB. We perform high resolution 1D numerical simulations of late collisions between two ultra-relativistic shells in order to explore these events. We examine the case where a cold uniform shell collides with a self-similar Blandford and McKee shell in a constant density environment and consider cases with different Lorentz fa…
The observation of Very High Energy gamma rays (VHE, E > 100 GeV) led us to the identification of extremely energetic processes and particle acceleration sites both within our Galaxy and beyond. We expect that VHE facilities, like CTA, will explore these sources with an unprecedented level of detail. However, the transient and unpredictable nature of many important processes requires the development of proper monitoring strategies, to observe them. With this study, we estimate the properties of VHE transients that can be effectively detected by monitoring facilities. We use data collected by t…
Very high energy (VHE, E >100 GeV) gamma-rays are absorbed via interaction with low-energy photons from the extragalactic background light (EBL) if the involved photon energies are above the threshold for electron-positron pair creation. The VHE gamma-ray absorption, which is energy dependent and increases strongly with redshift, distorts the VHE spectra observed from distant objects. The observed energy spectra of the AGNs carry, therefore, an imprint of the EBL. The detection of VHE gamma-ray spectra of distant sources (z = 0.11 - 0.54) by current generation Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Tel…
Presently there are several classes of detected gamma-ray extragalatic sources. They are mostly associated to active galactic nuclei (AGN) and (at soft gamma rays) to gamma-ray bursts (GRB), but not only. Active galactic nuclei consist of accreting supermassive black holes hosted by a galaxy that present in some cases powerful relativistic jet activity. These sources, which have been studied in gamma rays for several decades, are probably the most energetic astrophysical objects, and their appearance depends much on whether their jets point to us. Gamma-ray bursts, thought to be associated to …
Constraints on the intergalactic magnetic field from Fermi-LAT observations of GRB 221009A
University of Hamburg（汉堡大学）；Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics, Heidelberg University（海德堡大学基尔霍夫物理研究所）；INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna（博洛尼亚天文物理与空间科学国家研究所）；Universitá di Trieste（的里雅斯特大学）；Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Trieste（意大利国家核物理研究所的里雅斯特分部）
通过GRB 221009A的观测，研究利用费米- LAT数据对星际磁场进行限制，得出B < 2.5 x 10^{-17} G的约束。
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, a key mission in multiwavelength and multimessenger studies, has been surveying the gamma-ray sky from its low-Earth orbit since 2008. Its two scientific instruments, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and the Large Area Telescope (LAT), cover 8 orders of magnitude in photon energy. The GBM consists of 12 Sodium Iodide detectors and 2 Bismuth Germinate detectors, covering the 10 keV - 40 MeV energy range, arrayed on two sides of the spacecraft so as to view the entire sky that is not occulted by the Earth. The LAT is a pair production telescope based on sili…
Massive black holes at galaxy center may tear apart a star when the star passes occasionally within the disruption radius, which is the so-called tidal disruption event(TDE). Most TDEs radiate with thermal emission resulted from the accretion disk, but three TDEs have been detected in bright non-thermal X-ray emission, which is interpreted as arising from the relativistic jets. Search for high-energy gamma-ray emission from one relativistic TDE (Swift J164449.3+573451) with the \textsl{Fermi} Large Area Telescope (LAT) has yielded non-detection. In this paper, we report the search for high ene…
We present the first catalog of high-confidence gamma-ray sources detected by the AGILE satellite during observations performed from July 9, 2007 to June 30, 2008. Catalogued sources are detected by merging all the available data over the entire time period. AGILE, launched in April 2007, is an ASI mission devoted to gamma-ray observations in the 30 MeV - 50 GeV energy range, with simultaneous X-ray imaging capability in the 18-60 keV band. This catalog is based on Gamma-Ray Imaging Detector (GRID) data for energies greater than 100 MeV. For the first AGILE catalog we adopted a conservative an…
