Related papers: Blazar Flares from Compton Dragged Shells
One of the most intriguing discoveries made by the Swift satellite is the flaring activity in about half of the afterglow lightcurves. Flares have been observed on both long and short duration GRBs and on time scales that range from minutes…
The second-order Fermi acceleration (Fermi-II) driven by turbulence may be responsible for the electron acceleration in blazar jets. We test this model with time-dependent simulations. The hard electron spectrum predicted by the Fermi-II…
We present two-dimensional fully-kinetic Particle-in-Cell simulations of decaying electromagnetic fluctuations. The computational box is such that wavelengths ranging from electron to ion gyroradii are resolved. The parameters used are…
The gamma-ray emission of blazar jets shows a pronounced variability and this feature provides limits to the size and to the speed of the emitting region. We study the gamma-ray variability of bright blazars using data from the first 18…
Fast $\gamma$-ray variability in blazars remains a central puzzle in high-energy astrophysics, challenging standard shock acceleration models. Blazars, a subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGN) with jets pointed close to our line of sight,…
Blazars are thought to emit highly-collimated outflows, so-called jets. By their close alignment to our line of sight, relativistic beaming effects enable us to observe these jets over the whole electromagnetic spectrum up to TeV energies,…
The phenomenology of gamma-ray bright blazars can be accounted for by a sequence in the source power and intensity of the diffuse radiation field surrounding the relativistic jet. Correspondingly, the equilibrium particle distribution peaks…
Compton scattering of external radiation by nonthermal particles in outflowing blazar jets is dominated by accretion-disk photons rather than scattered radiation to distances $\sim 0.01-0.1$ pc from the central engine for standard…
The blazar sequence is reflected in a correlation of the peak luminosity versus peak frequency of the synchrotron component of blazars. This correlation has been considered one of the fundamental pieces of evidence for the existence of a…
Theories of high energy radiation production in quasar jets can be verified by studies of both time-averaged spectra and variability patterns. While the former has been explored extensively, the latter is in its infancy. In this paper, we…
Internal shocks propagating through an ambient radiation field, are subject to a radiative drag that, under certain conditions, can significantly affect their dynamics and, consequently, the evolution of the beaming cone of emission…
We analyze a grid of radiative hydrodynamic simulations of solar flares to study the energy balance and response of the atmosphere to nonthermal electron beam heating. The appearance of chromospheric bubbles is one of the most notable…
We have considered all blazars observed in the X-ray band and for which the slope of the X-ray spectrum is available. We have collected 421 spectra of 268 blazars, including 12 archival unpublished ASCA spectra of 7 blazars whose analysisis…
Blazar spectra are one of the most important windows into the physical processes occurring along jets. The spectrum, composed from the different emitting regions along the jet, allows us to constrain the physical conditions in the jet. I…
We present centimeter-band total flux density and linear polarization light curves illustrating the signature of shocks during radio band outbursts associated in time with gamma-ray flares detected by the Fermi LAT. The general…
Popular internal shock models, developed to explain production of high energy flares in blazar jets, involve collisions between local overdensities of matter being ejected by a central engine and moving along the jet with different…
A principal candidate for quiescent non-thermal gamma-ray emission from magnetars is resonant inverse Compton scattering in the strong fields of their magnetospheres. This paper outlines expectations for such emission, formed from…
The energy dissipation mechanism in blazar jet is unknown. Blazar's flares could provide insights on this problem. Here we report statistical results of XMM-Newton X-ray flares of Mrk 421. We analyze all public XMM-Newton X-ray observations…
For a sample of 51 blazars with extensive optical polarization data, we used circular statistics to calculate the scatter among the polarization position angles for each object. We found that this scatter is correlated with the radio core…
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…