Automatic quenching of high energy gamma-ray sources by synchrotron photons
Abstract
We investigate a magnetized plasma in which injected high energy gamma-rays annihilate on a soft photon field, that is provided by the synchrotron radiation of the created pairs. For a very wide range of magnetic fields, this process involves gamma-rays between 0.3 GeV and 30 TeV. We derive a simple dynamical system for this process, analyze its stability to runaway production of soft photons and paris, and find conditions for it to automatically quench by reaching a steady state with an optical depth to photon-photon annihilation larger than unity. We discuss applications to broad-band gamma-ray emitters, in particular supermassive black holes. Automatic quenching limits the gamma-ray luminosity of these objects and predicts substantial pair loading of the jets of less active sources.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0701633,
title = {Automatic quenching of high energy gamma-ray sources by synchrotron photons},
author = {L. Stawarz and J. G. Kirk},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0701633},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
11 pages, 2 figures included. Revised version, accepted for publication in ApJL