Related papers: Magnetization of jets in luminous blazars
Recently, particle in cell (PIC) simulations have shown that relativistic turbulence in collisionless plasmas can result in an equilibrium particle distribution function where turbulent heating is balanced by radiative cooling of electrons.…
The power of blazar jets rivals the power that gravity can extract from accreting matter. The mechanism launching and accelerating jets can be considered as the most efficient engine operating in radio--loud sources. It is still a matter of…
We propose and test a fairly simple idea that could account for the blazar sequence: all jets are launched with similar energy per baryon, independently of their power. For instance, flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs), the most powerful…
Blazars are relativistic magnetized plasma outflows from supermassive black holes that point very close to our line of sight. Their emission is nonthermal dominated and highly variable across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.…
The current paradigm foresees that relativistic jets are launched as magnetically dominated flows, whose magnetic power is progressively converted to kinetic power of of the matter of the jet, until equipartition is reached. Therefore, at…
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…
Blazars show variability on timescales ranging from minutes to years, the former being comparable to and in some cases even shorter than the light-crossing time of the central black hole. The observed gamma-ray lightcurves can be described…
We present time-dependent axisymmetric magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the interaction of a relativistic magnetized wind produced by a proto-magnetar with a surrounding stellar envelope, in the first $\sim 10$ seconds after core…
High-energy photons propagating in the magnetised medium with large velocity gradients can mediate energy and momentum exchange. Conversion of these photons into electron-positron pairs in the field of soft photons with the consequent…
The energetic composition of radio lobes in the FR II galaxies $-$ estimated by comparing their radio luminosities with the powers required to inflate cavities in the external medium $-$ seems to exclude the possibility of their energetic…
In the paradigm of magnetic launching of astrophysical jets, instabilities in the MHD flow are a good candidate to convert the Poynting flux into the kinetic energy of the plasma. If the magnetised plasma fills the almost entire space, the…
Blazars are a sub-category of radio-loud active galactic nuclei with relativistic jets pointing towards the observer. They exhibit non-thermal variable emission, which practically extends over the whole electromagnetic spectrum. Despite the…
We study the time dependent spectra produced via the bulk Compton process by a cold, relativistic shell of plasma moving (and accelerating) along the jet of a blazar, scattering on external photons emitted by the accretion disc and…
In this paper we investigate the properties of a sample of six BL Lacs by fitting their spectra using our inhomogeneous jet model with an accelerating, magnetically dominated, parabolic base, which transitions to a slowly decelerating…
Blazars radiate from relativistic plasma jets with bulk Lorentz factors {\Gamma} ~ 10, closely aligned along our line of sight. In a number of blazars of the Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar type such as 3C 454.3 and 3C 279 gamma-ray flares have…
The synchrotron reflection scenario recently proposed to explain $\gamma$-ray flares observed from blazar jets is studied. Our analysis takes into account the angular distribution of the beamed radiation, the finite extent of the scattering…
Here we present a new approach for constraining luminous blazars, incorporating fully time-dependent and self-consistent modeling of bright gamma-ray flares of PKS1510-089 resolved with Fermi-LAT, in the framework of the internal shock…
The internal shocks scenario in relativistic jets is used to explain the variability of the blazar emission. Recent studies have shown that the magnetic field significantly alters the shell collision dynamics, producing a variety of…
In my review of jet phenomena in quasars, I focus on the following questions: How powerful are jets in radio-loud quasars? What is their composition? How are they launched? And why, in most quasars, are they so weak? I demonstrate the…
Many quasars and active galactic nuclei (AGN) appear in radio, optical, and X-ray maps, as a bright nuclear sources from which emerge single or double long, thin jets. When observed with high angular resolution these jets show structure…