Hadronic Modeling of Blazars

¹ Lehrstuhl für Theoretische Physik IV, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum
² Centre for Space Research, Private Bag X600, Potchefstroom Campus, North-West University, Potchefstroom 2520

^a. e-mail: mweidinger@tp4.rub.de

Published online: 9 December 2013

Abstract

The ongoing systematic search for sources of extragalactic gamma rays has now revealed many blazars in which the very high energy output can not consistently be described as synchrotron self-Compton radiation. In this paper a self consistent hybrid model is described, explaining the very high energy radiation of those blazars as proton synchrotron radiation accompanied by photo-hadronic cascades. As the model includes all relevant radiative processes it naturally includes the synchrotron self-Compton case as well, depending on the chosen parameters. This paper focuses on rather high magnetic fields to be present within the jet, hence the hadronically dominated case. To discriminate the hadronic scenario against external photon fields being upscattered within the jet to produce the dominating gamma-ray output, the temporal behavior of blazars may be exploited with the presented model. Variability reveals both, the highly non-linear nature caused by the photohadronic cascades and typical timescales as well as fingerprints in the inter-band lightcurves of the involved hadrons. The modeling of two individual sources is shown : 1 ES 1011+496, a high frequency peaked blazar at redshift z = 0.212, which is well described within the hybrid scenario using physically reasonable parameters. The short term variability of the second example, namely 3C 454.3, a Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar at z = 0.859, reveals the limitations of the gamma-rays being highly dominated by proton synchrotron radiation.