Related papers: The Blazar Emission Environment: Insight from Soft…
If the high-energy emission from TeV blazars is produced by the Synchrotron Self-Compton (SSC) mechanism, then simultaneous X-ray and Gamma-ray observations of these objects are a powerful probe of the electron (and/or positron) populations…
Extragalactic nuclear activity is best explored with observations at high energies, where the most extreme flux and spectral variations are expected to occur, witnessing changes in the accretion flow or in the kinematics of the plasma. In…
The spectra of BL Lac objects and Fanaroff-Riley I radio galaxies are commonly explained by the one-zone leptonic synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) model. Spectral modeling of correlated multiwavelength data gives the comoving magnetic field…
We have studied the rapid X-ray variability of three extragalactic TeV gamma-ray sources; Mrk 421, Mrk 501 and PKS 2155-304. Analyzing the X-ray light curves obtained from ASCA and/or RXTE observations between 1993 and 1998, we have…
M87 is the first detected non-blazar extragalactic Tera-Electron-Volt (TeV) source with rapid variation and very flat spectrum in the TeV band. To explain the two-peaks in the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the nucleus of M87 which…
BL Lac objects are the best candidates to study the jet properties since their spectral energy distributions (SEDs) are less contaminated by the emission from the accretion disk and external Compton processes. We compile the broadband SEDs…
Ultrahigh energy protons and nuclei from extragalactic cosmic ray sources initiate intergalactic electromagnetic cascades, resulting in observable fluxes of $\gamma$-rays in the GeV-TeV energy domain. The total spectrum of such cascade…
The extragalactic gamma-ray sky at TeV energies is dominated by blazars, a subclass of accreting super-massive black holes with powerful relativistic outflows directed at us. Only constituting a small fraction of the total power output of…
The radiation mechanism of very high energy $\gamma$-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,…
Recent Cerenkov observations of the two BL Lac objects PKS 2155-304 and Mkn 501 revealed TeV flux variability by a factor ~2 in just 3-5 minutes. Even accounting for the effects of relativistic beaming, such short timescales are challenging…
I study the location of the $\gamma$-ray emission in blazar jets by creating a Compton-scattering approximation valid for all anisotropic radiation fields in the Thomson through Klein-Nishina regimes, which is highly accurate and can speed…
The extragalactic background light (EBL) in the IR to UV bands partly absorbs very high energy (VHE, $E \geq$ 100GeV) $\gamma-$ray photons travelling over cosmological distances via pair production. In this paper, to get stronger…
M87 is the first extragalactic source detected in the TeV range that is not a blazar. With the increasing performances of ground-based Cherenkov telescopes, we can now probe the variability in the gamma-ray flux at small timescales, thus…
Blazars are the most violent steady/recurrent sources of high-energy gamma-ray emission in the known Universe. They are prominent emitters of electromagnetic radiation throughout the entire electromagnetic spectrum. The observable radiation…
Most blazars are known to be hosted in giant elliptic galaxies, but their cluster environments have not been thoroughly investigated. Cluster environments may contain radiation fields of low-energy photons created by nearby galaxies and/or…
Lately a specific kind of blazars drew the attention of the gamma-ray astronomy community: the extreme TeV BL Lacs, blazars that present an extremely energetic and hard emission at very high-energy. Explaining their features is still an…
Context. Very high-energy (VHE) $\gamma$-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…
Following the detection of strong TeV gamma-ray flares from the BL Lac object 1ES 1959+650 with the Whipple 10 m Cherenkov telescope on May 16 and 17, 2002, we performed intensive Target of Opportunity (ToO) radio, optical, X-ray and TeV…
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…
The synergy of GLAST and the proposed EXIST mission as the Black Hole Finder Probe in the Beyond Einstein Program is remarkable. With its full-sky per orbit hard X-ray imaging (3-600 keV) and "nuFnu" sensitivity comparable to GLAST, EXIST…