The “Far Site” Scenario for Gamma-ray Emission in Blazars

A View from the VLBI Observing Perspective

¹ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC), Apartado 3004, E-18080 Granada, Spain
² Institute for Astrophysical Research, Boston University, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA
³ Current Address: Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe, Postbus 2, NL-7990 AA Dwingeloo, the Netherlands,

^a e-mail: agudo@jive.nl

Published online: 9 December 2013

Abstract

Since the birth of γ-ray astronomy, locating the origin of γ-ray emission has been a fundamental problem for the knowledge of the emission processes involved. Densely time sampled monitoring programs with very long baseline interferometry and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, together with several other facilities at most of the available spectral ranges (including polarization measurements if possible) are starting to shed new light for the case of blazars. A successful observing technique consists on analyzing the timing of multi-waveband variations in the flux and linear polarization, as well as changes in ultra-high resolution VLBI images to associate the particularly bright events at different wavebands. Such association can be robustly demonstrated by probing the statistical significance of the correlation among spectral ranges through Monte Carlo simulations. The location of the high energy emission region is inferred through its relative location with regard to the associated low energy event observed in the VLBI images. In this paper, I present some of the latest results using this method that locate the GeV emission within the jets of blazars AO 0235+164 and OJ287 at > 12 pc from the central AGN engine, hence supporting the “far site” scenario.