Optical Variability of the TeV Blazar 1ES 0806+524 on Diverse Timescales
Ashwani Pandey, Alok C. Gupta, Sofia O. Kurtanidze, Paul J. Wiita, G. Damljanovic, R. Bachev, Jin Zhang, O. M. Kurtanidze, A. Darriba, R. A. Chigladze, G. Latev… 展开作者
Ashwani Pandey, Alok C. Gupta, Sofia O. Kurtanidze, Paul J. Wiita, G. Damljanovic, R. Bachev, Jin Zhang, O. M. Kurtanidze, A. Darriba, R. A. Chigladze, G. Latev, M. G. Nikolashvili, S. Peneva, E. Semkov, A. Strigachev, S. N. Tiwari, O. Vince
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14 pages, 6 figures, 7 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ
We report the results of our optical (VRI) photometric observations of the TeV blazar 1ES 0806$+$524 on 153 nights during 2011-2019 using seven optical telescopes in Europe and Asia. We investigated the variability of the blazar on intraday as well as on long-term timescales. We examined eighteen intraday light curves for flux and color variations using the most reliable power-enhanced F-test and the nested ANOVA test. Only on one night was a small, but significant, variation found, in both $V$ band and $R$ band light curves. The $V-R$ color index was constant on every one of those nights. Flux density changes of around 80 % were seen over the course of these eight years in multiple bands. We found a weighted mean optical spectral index of 0.639$\pm$0.002 during our monitoring period by fitting a power law ($F_ν \propto ν^{-α}$) in 23 optical ($VRI$) spectral energy distributions of 1ES 0806$+$524. We discuss different possible mechanisms responsible for blazar variability on diverse timescales.
Characteristic variability timescales in blazar gamma-ray light curves can provide insight into the physical processes responsible for the gamma-ray variability. The power spectral density (PSD) is capable of revealing such timescales, which may appear as breaks or periodicities. Continuous-time autoregressive moving-average (CARMA) models can be used to accurately estimate a light curve's PSD. Through a lightcurve simulation study, we develop a methodology to identify PSD breaks using CARMA models. Using this methodology, we study the gamma-ray light curves of 13 bright blazars observed with …
In any flux-density limited sample of blazars, the distribution of the timescale modulation factor $Δt'/Δt$, which quantifies the change in observed timescales compared to the rest-frame ones due to redshift and relativistic compression follows an exponential distribution with a mean depending on the flux limit of the sample. In this work we produce the mathematical formalism that allows us to use this information in order to uncover the underlining rest-frame probability density function of measurable timescales of blazar jets. We extensively test our proposed methodology using a simulated FS…
Our goal is to research the upper limits on the extragalactic background light (EBL). The upper limits on the extragalactic background light (EBL), using the Fermi and very high energy (VHE) spectra recently observed in TeV blazars, are presented. We use an assumption that the VHE intrinsic photon index cannot be harder than the Fermi index measured by the Fermi-LAT. Totally, these upper limits on the EBL are compatible with ones given by most of EBL models. However, the models of high EBL density are denied by TeV blazars.
In the early days of April 2010, the blazar 3C 454.3 (z=0.859) underwent a strong gamma-ray outburst, reaching fluxes (E > 100 MeV) in excess of 10^-5 ph cm^-2 s^-1. The Fermi Gamma ray Space Telescope performed a 200 ks long pointed observation starting from 5 April 2010 19:38 UTC. This allowed us to try probing the variability of the gamma-ray emission on timescales of hours or less. We found the variability on a few hours timescale. On sub-hour timescale we found no evidence of significant variability, although the present statistics is not yet conclusive and further observations are needed…
The synergy between the Fermi-LAT and ground-based Cherenkov telescope arrays gives us the opportunity for the first time to characterize the high energy emission (100 MeV - 10 TeV) from more than 30 blazars. In this study we performed a Fermi-LAT spectral analysis for all TeV-detected blazars and combined it with archival TeV spectra. Our results for low synchrotron-peaked BL Lacs (LBL) show hints of absorption features in the GeV band that could be interpreted as internal opacity at the source. We note that simple or broken power laws cannot describe all the observed GeV-TeV spectra and more…
The TeV blazar Markarian 421 underwent multi-TeV flaring during April 2004 and simultaneously observed in x-ray and TeV energies. It was observed that the TeV outbursts had no counterparts in the lower energies, which implies that this might be an orphan flare. In the context of hadronic model, we have shown that this multi-TeV flaring can be produced due to the interaction of Fermi-accelerated protons of energy $\lesssim 168$ TeV with the background photons in the low energy tail of the synchrotron self-Compton spectrum of the blazar jet. We fit very well the flaring spectrum with this model.…
Recently, a new method to constrain the distances of blazars with unknown redshift using combined observations in the GeV and TeV regimes has been developed. The underlying assumption is that the Very High Energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) spectrum corrected for the absorption of TeV photons by the Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) via photon-photon interaction should still be softer than the gamma-ray spectrum observed by Fermi/LAT. The constraints found are related to the real redshifts by a simple linear relation, that has been used to infer the unknown or uncertain distance of blazars. The samp…
The synergy between the Fermi-LAT and ground-based Cherenkov telescope arrays gives us the opportunity for the first time to characterize the high-energy emission from blazars over 5 decades in energy, from 100 MeV to 10 TeV. In this study, we perform a Fermi-LAT spectral analysis for TeV-detected blazars and combine it with archival TeV data. We examine the observational properties in the gamma-ray band of our sample of TeV-detected blazars and compare the results with X-ray and GeV-selected populations. The spectral energy distributions (SEDs) that result from combining Fermi-LAT and ground-…
We compile from literature the broadband SEDs of twelve TeV blazars observed simultaneously or quasi-simultaneously with Fermi/LAT and other instruments. Two SEDs are available for each of the objects and the state is identified as a low or high state according to its flux density at GeV/TeV band. The observed SEDs of BL Lac objects (BL Lacs) are fitted well with the synchrotron + synchrotron-self-Compton (syn+SSC) model, whereas the SEDs of the two flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) need to include the contributions of external Compton scattering. In this scenario, it is found that the Doppl…
We report on our observations of the parsec-scale radio jet structures of five blazars that have been detected by ground-based TeV gamma-ray telescopes. These five blazars all belong to the class of high-frequency peaked BL Lac objects (HBLs), which are the most common blazar type detected at the TeV energy range. Because of their relative faintness in the radio, these HBLs are not well represented in other radio blazar surveys. Our observations consist of five epochs of Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) imaging from 2006 to 2009, of each of the five blazars 1ES 1101-232, Markarian 180, 1ES 1218…
Over seventy blazars identified as sources of TeV gamma ray emission have been detected, including approximately sixty BL Lac objects and seven flat spectrum radio quasars. The distribution in space of these objects can be described by a luminosity function, which gives their comoving space density as a function of their luminosity. We investigate a source selection method to be used for determining the luminosity function of TeV gamma-ray blazars using observations from VERITAS, a ground-based gamma-ray observatory consisting of an array of four atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes located in sou…
Context. Very high-energy (VHE) $γ$-ray measurements of distant TeV blazars can be nicely explained by TeV spectra induced by ultra high-energy cosmic rays. Aims. We develop a model for a plausible origin of hard spectra in distant TeV blazars. Methods. In the model, the TeV emission in distant TeV blazars is dominated by two mixed components. The first is the internal component with the photon energy around 1 TeV produced by inverse Compton scattering of the relativistic electrons on the synchrotron photons (SSC) with a correction for extragalactic background light absorbtion and the other is…
In this work, we use two different methods to determine the opacity of the TeV gamma-rays caused by the extragalactic background light (EBL) via e-e+ production due to photon-photon interaction. The first method, Model-Dependent Approach, uses various EBL models for estimating the opacity as a function of the redshift and energy of the TeV photons. The second method, Model-Independent Approach, relies on using the simultaneous observations of blazars in the MeV-GeV energy range from the Fermi-LAT and in the TeV band from the ground-based gamma-ray telescopes. We make the underline assumption t…
The intergalactic magnetic field (IGMF) in cosmic voids can be indirectly probed through its effect on electromagnetic cascades initiated by a source of TeV gamma rays, such as blazars, a subclass of active galactic nuclei. Blazars that are sufficiently luminous at TeV energies, "extreme TeV blazars", can produce detectable levels of secondary radiation from inverse Compton scattering of the electrons in the cascade, provided that the IGMF is not too large. We reveiw recent work in the literature which utilizes this idea to derive constraints on the IGMF for three TeV-detected blazars-1ES 0229…
The highest-energy blazars exhibit non-thermal radiation extending beyond 1 TeV with high luminosities and strong variabilities, indicating extreme particle acceleration in their relativistic jets. The gamma-ray spectra of blazars contain information about the distribution and cooling processes of high-energy particles in jets, the extragalactic background light between the source and the observer, and potentially, the environment of the gamma-ray emitting region and exotic physics that may modify the opacity of the universe to gamma rays. We use data from Fermi-LAT and VERITAS to study the va…
Fermi-LAT spectra at high energies (HE, 0.1-100 GeV) are often extrapolated to very high energies (VHE, >100 GeV) and considered either a good estimate or an upper limit for the blazars intrinsic VHE spectrum. This assumption seems not well justified, neither theoretically nor observationally. Besides being often softer, observations do indicate that spectra at VHE could be also harder than at HE, even when adopting the limit of Gamma=1.5. Results based on such straightforward GeV-TeV extrapolations are in general not reliable, and should be considered with caution.
We study the applicability of the idea of internal absorption of gamma-rays produced through synchrotron radiation of ultrarelativistic protons in highly magnetized blobs to 1ES 0229+200 and 3C 66A, the two TeV blazars which show unusually hard intrinsic gamma-ray spectra after being corrected for the intergalactic absorption. We show that for certain combinations of reasonable model parameters, even with quite modest energy requirements, the scenario allows a self-consistent explanation of the non-thermal emission of these objects in the keV, GeV, and TeV energy bands.
We investigate the variability properties of blazars in the GeV band using the data of the Fermi/LAT telescope. We find that blazars exhibit variability on the scales down to the minimal timescale resolvable by Fermi, which is a function of the peak photon count rate in the LAT. This implies that the real minimal variability timescales for the majority of blazars are typically shorter than those resolvable by the LAT. We find that for several blazars these minimal variability timescales reach those associated to the blazar central engine, the supermassive black hole. At the same time, none of …
Extremely High Synchrotron Peak (EHSP) blazars are observed to form a small population of sources with high energy hump peaking at TeV energies in their broad-band spectral energy distributions. The observed gamma-ray emission from these sources at GeV-TeV energies is described by unusual hard spectral indices. The observed spectral and temporal characteristics of these sources challenge the standard leptonic models for the broad-band emissions from blazars. Therefore, such sources provide astrophysical sites to investigate directly the particle acceleration, cooling of relativistic particles …
We reviewed X-ray flux and spectral variability properties studied to date by various X-ray satellites for Mrk 421 and PKS 2155-304, which are TeV emitting blazars. Mrk 421 and PKS 2155-304 are the most X-ray luminous blazars in the northern and southern hemispheres, respectively. Blazars show flux and spectral variabilities in the complete electromagnetic spectrum on diverse timescales ranging from a few minutes to hours, days, weeks, months and even several years. The flux and spectral variability on different timescales can be used to constrain the size of the emitting region, estimate the …
In this work, we collected a sample of 69 TeV blazars from TeVCat, obtained their multi-wavelength observations, and fitted their spectral energy distributions by using the second degree polynomial function. The structure parameters of the synchrotron bumps for 68 blazars and those of the inverse-Compton bumps for 56 blzars are obtained. Then, we adopted statistical analysis to the parameters (curvature, peak frequency, peak luminosity, bolometric luminosity, and X/$γ$-ray spectral indexes). From our analysis and discussions, we can get following conclusions: 1. There is a clear positive corre…
The radiation mechanism of very high energy $γ$-ray emission from blazars and crucial parameters like magnetic field, and size of the emitting region are not well understood yet. To understand the above mentioned properties of blazars, we observed five nearby TeV $γ$-ray emitting blazars (Mrk421, Mrk501, 1ES2344+514, 1ES1218+304 and 3C454.3) and one radio galaxy (M87) using the High Altitude GAmma Ray (HAGAR) telescope. HAGAR is an array of seven telescopes located at Hanle, India to detect Cherenkov light caused by extensive air showers initiated by $γ$-rays. Mrk421 was observed to undergo on…
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 Gamma_{em}~100 toward the observer. The Lorentz factor is clearly in excess of the jet Lorentz factors Gamma_j\simless 10 measured on sub-pc scales in these sources. We propose that the TeV emission originates from compact emitting regions that move relativistically {\it within} a jet of bulk Gamma_j~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 diss…
We report the first results of a systematic investigation to characterize blazar variability power spectral densities (PSDs) at optical frequencies using densely sampled (5--15 minutes integration time), high photometric accuracy ($\lesssim$0.2--0.5\%) R-band intranight light curves, covering timescales ranging from several hours to $\sim$15\,minutes. Our sample consists of 14 optically bright blazars, including nine BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs) and five flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) which have shown statistically significant variability during 29 monitoring sessions. We model the intra…
We carried out a high time-resolution, multicolour optical observing campaign for eight $γ$-ray detected blazars during 2010-2020. We analyze flux variations, correlations between magnitudes and colours on different timescales. Intraday variability (IDV) is detected in all eight sources of our sample. A bluer-when-brighter (BWB) chromatic trend is dominant on intraday timescales. On the short timescales, the BWB trend only shows up in ON 231, 3C 279, BL Lacertae and 1E 1458.8+2249. There is a BWB trend in 3C 279 on the long timescale. We estimate the upper limits of black hole mass for three b…
We present the results of photometric observations of three TeV blazars, 3C 66A, S5 0954+658 and BL Lacertae, during the period 2013--2017. Our extensive observations were performed in a total of 360 nights which produced $\sim$6820 image frames in BVRI bands. We study flux and spectral variability of these blazars on these lengthy timescales. We also examine the optical Spectral Energy Distributions of these blazars, which are crucial in understanding the emission mechanism of long-term variability in blazars. All three TeV blazars exhibited strong flux variability during our observations. Th…
Blazars are a subclass of radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs), where the jet is aligned close to the line of sight. Blazars emission is dominated by non-thermal processes, where Doppler boosted radiation originates from a relativistic population of charged particles within the jet. From radio to TeV energies, blazars are highly variable on timescales from minutes to several months. There are several mechanisms proposed to explain variability, including changes in the viewing angle of the jet, propagating along the rotation axis of the accretion disc. The misalignment of a supermassive bla…
We report the results of flux and spectral variability studies of all seven {\it Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR)} observations of TeV $γ-$ray emitting blazar Markarian (or Mrk) 501. We found strong evidence of intraday variability in 3-79 keV X-ray light curves (LCs) of Mrk 501 during four out of these seven observations. We examined spectral variability using a model-independent hardness-ratio analysis and found a general "harder-when-brighter" behaviour in two observations. We also investigated the nature of 3-79 keV X-ray spectra of TeV blazar Mrk 501 and found that five out …
Gamma-rays propagating through space are likely to be extinguished via electron-positron pair production off of the ambient extragalactic background light (EBL). The spectrum of the EBL is produced by starlight (and starlight reprocessed by dust) from all galaxies throughout the history of the Universe. The attenuation of 40 - 400 GeV gamma-rays has been observed by \textit{Fermi} and used to measure the EBL spectrum over energies 1 eV -10 eV out to redshift $z\sim 1$. Measurements of several TeV blazers are consistent with attenuation, attributed to the EBL at redshift $z\sim 0.1$. Here we si…
Extreme TeV blazars (ETBs) are active galactic nuclei with jets presumably pointing towards the observer having their intrinsic spectral energy distributions (SEDs) peaked at an energy in excess of 1 TeV. These sources typically reveal relatively weak and slow variability as well as an extremely high frequency of the low-energy SED peak compared to other classes of blazars. It proved to be exceedingly hard to incorporate all these peculiar properties of ETBs into the framework of a reasonable $γ$-ray emission model. ETB physics have recently attracted great attention in the astrophysical commu…
We investigate the formation of TeV spectrum of a distant blazar PKS 1424+240 residing at a redshift $z\geq0.6$ in two scenarios in the frame of a lepto-hadronic jet model taking both the uncertainties of the extragalactic background light (EBL) and its redshift into account. In the first scenario, TeV emission is attributed to the synchrotron emission of pair cascades resulting from $pγ$ interaction; in the second scenario, TeV emission is attributed to the proton-synchrotron emission, and an internal absorption due to interaction with the photons around the jet is included. The results show …
Attenuation of the TeV gamma-ray flux from distant blazars through pair production with extragalactic background light leads to the development of electromagnetic cascades and subsequent, lower energy, GeV secondary gamma-ray emission. Due to the deflection of VHE cascade electrons by extragalactic magnetic fields (EGMF), the spectral shape of this arriving cascade gamma-ray emission is dependent on the strength of the EGMF. Thus, the spectral shape of the GeV-TeV emission from blazars has the potential to probe the EGMF strength along the line of sight to the object. We investigate constraint…
We report the first results of timing and spectral studies of \textit{Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR)} observations of six TeV emitting high-frequency peaked blazars: 1ES 0347$-$121, 1ES 0414$+$009, RGB J0710$+$591, 1ES 1101$-$232, 1ES 1218$+$304 and H 2356-309. Two out of these six TeV blazars, 1ES 1101$-$232 and 1ES 1218$+$304, showed strong evidence of intraday variations in the 3--79 keV energy range during those observations. We also found a hint of an intraday variability timescale of 23.5 ks in the light curve of 1ES 1218$+$304 using an autocorrelation function analysis. …
Blazars are the most active extragalactic gamma-ray sources. They show sporadic bursts of activity, lasting from hours to months. In this work we present a 10-year analysis of a sample of bright sources detected by Fermi-LAT (100 MeV - 300 GeV). Using 2-week binned lightcurves (LC) we estimated the Duty Cycle (DC): fraction of time that the source spends in an active state. The objects present different DC values, with an average of $22.74\%$ and $23.08 \%$ when considering (and not) the Extragalactic Background Light ( EBL). Additionally we study the so called "blazar sequence" trend for the …
We investigate the position of the radio core in a blazar by multi-epoch astrometric observations at 43 GHz. Using the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA), we have conducted four adjacent observations in February 2011 and another four in October 2011, and succeeded in measuring the position of the radio core in the TeV blazar Mrk 501 relative to a distant compact quasar NRAO 512. During our observations, we find that (1) there is no positional change within ~0.2 mas or ~2.0 pc de-projected with $\pm1σ$ error for the weighted-mean phase-referenced positions of Mrk 501 core relative to N…
The Fermi-LAT revealed that the census of the gamma-ray sky is dominated by blazars. Looking for a possible connection between radio and gamma-ray emission is a central issue for understanding the blazar physics, and various works were dedicated to this topic. However, while a strong and significant correlation was found between radio and gamma-ray emission in the 0.1-100 GeV energy range, the connection between radio and very high energy (VHE, E>0.1 TeV) emission is still elusive. The main reason is the lack of a homogeneous VHE sky coverage, due to the operational mode of the imaging atmosph…
We reviewed multi-wavelength blazars variability and detection of quasi-periodic oscillations on intra-day timescales. The variability timescale from few minutes to up to less than a days is commonly known as intra-day variability. These fast variations are extremely useful to constrain the size of emitting region, black hole mass estimation, etc. It is noticed that in general blazars show intra-day variability in the complete electromagnetic spectrum. But some class of blazars either do not show or show very little intra-day variability in a specific band of electromagnetic spectrum. Blazars …
We propose a scenario for self-consistent interpretation of GeV - TeV spectrum of a distant blazar PKS 1424+240. In this scenario, ultra-high energy (UHE) protons are assumed to exist in the blazar jet and produce gamma rays through synchrotron emission emitted by relativistic protons and pair cascades (resulted from $pγ$ interaction); meanwhile, some of these UHE protons may escape from the jet and are injected into intergalactic space. Therefore, we assume that UHE cosmic rays (CR) originate from relativistic protons in the jet and use energy-independent escape timescale to obtain UHECR inje…
The first ever identification of a cosmic ray accelerator as the consequence of spacial and temporal correlation of IceCube event 170922A with flaring of a blazar TXS 0506+056 motivated us to look for other flaring blazars in Fermi-LAT 3FGL catalog, which could be correlated with IceCube high energy track events. We have studied the Fermi-LAT light curves of blazars correlated with neutrino track events. Among the eight sources identified within 2$σ$ angular uncertainty of the IceCube track events selected in our study, we find only one source 3FGL J2255+2409 was in flaring state during the ne…
Extreme high-energy peaked BL Lac objects (EHBLs) are a new emerging class of blazars. The typical two-hump structured spectral energy distribution (SED) is shifted to higher energies with respect to other more established classes of blazars. Multi-wavelength observations allow us to constrain their synchrotron peak in the medium and hard X-ray bands. Their gamma-ray emission dominates above the GeV gamma-ray band, and in some objects it extends up to several TeV (e.g. 1ES 0229+200). Their hard TeV spectrum is also interesting for the implications on the extragalactic background light indirect…
We present results of X-ray spectral and time-domain variability analyses of 4 faint, "quiescent" blazars from the Swift-BAT 105-month catalog. We use observations from a recent, 5-month long NICER campaign, as well as archival BAT data. Variations in the 0.3-2 keV flux are detected on minute, $\sim$weekly, and monthly timescales, but we find that the fractional variability $F_{\rm var}$ on these timescales is $<25\%$ and decreases on longer timescales, implying generally low-amplitude variability across all sources and showing very low variability on monthly timescales ($F_{\rm var}\lesssim13…
Despite numerous detections of individual flares, the physical origin of the rapid variability observed from blazars remains uncertain. Using Bayesian blocks and the Eisenstein-Hut HOP algorithm, we characterize flux variations of high significance in the $γ$-ray light curves of two samples of blazars. Daily binned long-term light curves of TeV-bright blazars observed with the First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) are compared to those of GeV-bright blazars observed with the Large Area Telescope on board the $Fermi$ Gamma-ray Space Telescope ($Fermi$-LAT). We find no evidence for systematic a…
We briefly review contemporary extragalactic γ-ray propagation models. It is shown that the Extragalactic Magnetic Field (EGMF) strength and structure are poorly known. Strict lower limits on the EGMF strength in voids are of order 10^{-17}--10^{-20} G, thus allowing a substantial contribution of a secondary component generated by electromagnetic cascades to the observable spectrum. We show that this "electromagnetic cascade model" is supported by data from imaging Cherenkov telescopes and the Fermi LAT detector.
Cosmic opacity for very high-energy gamma rays ($E>10$ TeV) due to the interaction with the extragalactic background light can be strongly reduced because of possible Lorentz-violating terms in the particle dispersion relations expected, e.g., in several versions of quantum gravity theories. We discuss the possibility to use very high energy observations of blazars to detect anomalies of the cosmic opacity induced by LIV, considering in particular the possibility to use -- besides the bright and close-by BL Lac Mkn 501 -- extreme BL Lac objects. We derive the modified expression for the optica…
High frequency peaked high redshift blazars, are extreme in the sense that their spectrum is particularly hard and peaks at TeV energies. Standard leptonic scenarios require peculiar source parameters and/or a special setup in order to account for these observations. Electromagnetic cascades seeded by ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) in the intergalactic medium have also been invoked, assuming a very low intergalactic magnetic field (IGMF). Here we study the synchrotron emission of UHECR secondaries produced in blazars located in magnetised environments, and show that it can provide an al…
We report on two Chandra observations of the quasar PSO J0309+27, the most distant blazar observed so far (z=6.1), performed eight months apart, in March and November 2020. Previous Swift-XRT observation showed that this object is one of the brightest X-ray sources beyond redshift 6.0 ever observed so far. This new data-set confirmed the high flux level and unveiled a spectral change occurred on a very short timescale (250s rest-frame), caused by a significant softening of the emission spectrum. This kind of spectral variability, on a such short interval, has never been reported in the X-ray e…
Observations of fast TeV $γ$-ray flares from blazars reveal the extreme compactness of emitting regions in blazar jets. Combined with very-long-baseline radio interferometry measurements, they probe the structure and emission mechanism of the jet. We report on a fast TeV $γ$-ray flare from BL Lacertae observed by VERITAS, with a rise time of about 2.3 hours and a decay time of about 36 minutes. The peak flux at $>$200 GeV measured with the 4-minute binned light curve is $(4.2 \pm 0.6) \times 10^{-6} \;\text{photons} \;\text{m}^{-2}\, \text{s}^{-1}$, or $\sim$180% the Crab Nebula flux. Variabil…
We use Monte Carlo/Fokker-Planck simulations to study the X-ray time lags. Our results show that soft lags will be observed as long as the decay of the flare is dominated by radiative cooling, even when acceleration and cooling timescales are similar. Hard lags can be produced in presence of a competitive achromatic particle energy loss mechanism if the acceleration process operates on a timescale such that particles are slowly moved towards higher energy while the flare evolves. In this type of scenario, the γ -ray/X-ray quadratic relation is also reproduced.
It is well-known that the $γ$-ray emission in blazars originate in the relativistic jet pointed at the observers. However, it is not clear whether the exact location of the GeV emission is less than a pc from the central engine, such that it may receive sufficient amount of photons from the broad line region (BLR) or farther out at 1-100 pc range. The former assumption has been successfully used to model the spectral energy distribution of many blazars. However, simultaneous detection of TeV $γ$-rays along with GeV outbursts in some cases indicate that the emission region must be outside the B…
Blazars and in particular the subclass of high synchrotron peaked Active Galactic Nuclei are among the main targets for the present generation of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) and will remain of great importance for very high-energy $γ$-ray science in the era of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). Observations by IACTs, which have relatively small fields of view ($\sim$ few degrees), are limited by viewing conditions; therefore, it is important to select the most promising targets in order to increase the number of detections. The aim of this paper is to search for unclassi…
In this paper, we investigated the issue of black hole masses and minimum timescales of jet emission for blazars. We proposed a sophisticated model that sets an upper limit to the central black hole masses $M_{\bullet}$ with the minimum timescales $Δt^{\rm{ob}}_{\rm{min}}$ of variations observed in blazars. The value of $Δt^{\rm{ob}}_{\rm{min}}$ presents an upper limit to the size of blob in jet. The blob is assumed to be generated in the jet-production region in the vicinity of black hole, and then the expanding blob travels outward along the jet. We applied the model to 32 blazars, 29 of whi…
Ultrahigh energy protons and nuclei from extragalactic cosmic ray sources initiate intergalactic electromagnetic cascades, resulting in observable fluxes of $γ$-rays in the GeV-TeV energy domain. The total spectrum of such cascade $γ$-rays of hadronic nature is significantly harder than the one usually expected from blazars. The spectra of some sources known as "extreme TeV blazars" could be well-described by this "intergalactic hadronic cascade model" (IHCM). We calculate the shape of the observable point-like spectrum, as well as the observable angular distibution of $γ$-rays, for the first …
The multi-wavelength emission from a newly identified population of `extreme-TeV' blazars, with Compton peak frequencies around 1 TeV, is difficult to interpret with standard one-zone emission models. Large values of the minimum electron Lorentz factor and quite low magnetisation values seem to be required. We propose a scenario where protons and electrons are co-accelerated on internal or recollimation shocks inside the relativistic jet. In this situation, energy is transferred from the protons to the electrons in the shock transition layer, leading naturally to a high minimum Lorentz factor …
The high-synchrotron-peaked blazar 1ES 1959+650 was among the first extragalactic sources detected in the very high energy gamma ray band (VHE, E > 100 GeV). In October 2015, the source entered an extended period of activity that continued through July 2016, during which several strong VHE flares were observed. This flaring activity in the TeV band was accompanied by a strong increase in the optical, X-ray, and GeV gamma-ray flux of the source, surpassing its brightest recorded flux states. The VERITAS telescope array performed observations of 1ES 1959+650 between October 2015 and June 2016, a…
