Related papers: Particle-acceleration timescales in TeV blazar fla…
Three uninterrupted, long (lasting respectively 7, 10, and 10 days) ASCA observations of the well-studied TeV-bright blazars Mrk 421, Mrk 501 and PKS 2155-304 all show continuous strong X-ray flaring. Despite the relatively faint intensity…
The high energy peaked blazars are known to undergo episodes of flaring in GeV-TeV gamma-rays involving different time scales and the flaring mechanism is not well understood despite long term simultaneous multiwavelength observations.…
Shear flows are naturally expected to occur in astrophysical environments and potential sites of continuous non-thermal Fermi-type particle acceleration. Here we investigate the efficiency of expanding relativistic outflows to facilitate…
We discuss possible mechanisms of acceleration of particles in solar flares and show that turbulence plays an important role in all the mechanism. It is also argued that stochastic particle acceleration by turbulent plasma waves is the most…
The thermal-to-nonthermal partition was found to vary greatly from one flare to another resulting in a broad variety of cases from 'heating without acceleration' to 'acceleration without heating'. Recent analysis of microwave data of these…
Since the first TeV blazar Markarian (Mrk) 421 was detected in 1992, the number of established TeV gamma-ray emitting BL Lac objects has grown to 6, with redshifts ranging from 0.031 (Mrk 421) to 0.129 (H 1426+428). The intensive study of…
A plasma velocity shear layer and/or a tangential flow discontinuity provide conditions allowing for energetic particle acceleration. We review such acceleration processes acting both in non-relativistic and in relativistic flows. In…
We consider the acceleration of particles due to a velocity shear in relativistic astrophysical flows. The basic physical picture and the formation of power law momentum spectra is discussed for a non-relativistic velocity field using a…
Many of the blazars observed by Fermi actually have the peak of their time-averaged gamma-ray emission outside the $\sim$ GeV Fermi energy range, at $\sim$ MeV energies. The detailed shape of the emission spectrum around the $\sim$ MeV peak…
The launch of the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope and the imaging air Cerenkov telescopes H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS have substantially transformed our knowledge of gamma-ray sources in the last decade. The extragalactic gamma-ray sky is…
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…
We compare the rise and decay timescales of $\sim$200 long-term ($\sim$weeks-months) GeV and R-band outbursts and $\sim$25 short-term ($\sim$hr-day) GeV flares in a sample of 10 blazars using light curves from the Fermi-LAT and the…
Most of the light from blazars, active galactic nuclei with jets of magnetized plasma that point nearly along the line of sight, is produced by high-energy particles, up to $\sim 1$ TeV. Although the jets are known to be ultimately powered…
A major flaring state of the BL Lac object Mrk 501 was observed by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) in June, 2014. Flux levels higher than one Crab unit were recorded and rapid variability at very high energies ($\sim$2-20…
The particle acceleration of blazar jets is crucial to high-energy astrophysics, yet the acceleration mechanism division in blazar subclasses and the underlying nature of these mechanisms remain elusive. In this work, we utilized the…
We discuss the implications of rapid (few-minute) variability in the TeV flux of blazars, which has been observed recently with the HESS and MAGIC telescopes. The variability timescales seen in PKS 2155-304 and Mrk 501 are much shorter than…
Recently, the MAGIC collaboration reported evidence for a delay in the arrival times of photons of different energies during a gamma-ray flare from the blazar Markarian 501 on 2005 July 9. We apply a homogeneous synchrotron self-Compton…
Blazars have been regarded as one of the most powerful sources of the highest energy cosmic rays and also their byproducts, neutrinos. Provided that a magnetized filamentary system is established in a blazar jet as well, we could apply the…
We examine Fermi-type acceleration at relativistic shocks, and distinguish between the initial boost of the first shock crossing cycle, where the energy gain per particle can be very large, and the Fermi process proper with repeated shock…
We report results from a multi-wavelength monitoring campaign on Mrk 421 over the period of 2003-2004. The source was observed simultaneously at TeV and X-ray energies, with supporting observations frequently carried out at optical and…