English

Extreme blazars

Astrophysics 2009-10-31 v1

Abstract

The recent Cherenkov telescope observations and detections of the BL Lac objects Mkn 421, Mkn 501, 1ES 2344+514, PKS 2155--304 and possibly 1ES 1959+658 have shown that there exists a subclass of BL Lac objects emitting a substantial fraction of their power between the GeV and the TeV bands. These are the sources whose synchrotron spectrum peaks, in a ν\nu--νFν\nu F_{\nu} representation, in the EUV or X-ray band. Here I suggest that even more extreme BL Lacs can exist, whose synchrotron spectrum peaks in the MeV band. These sources should emit a substantial fraction of their power in the TeV band by the inverse Compton process. Limits to the maximum possible emitted frequencies are discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9812202,
  title  = {Extreme blazars},
  author = {Gabriele Ghisellini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9812202},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

15 pages, 6 figures, invited paper at the VERITAS workshop on TeV Astrophysics of Extragalactic Objects