On the Origin of Rapid Flares in TeV Blazars

Abstract

The rapid variability of the VHE emission reported for some TeV blazars implies Doppler factors well in excess of those inferred from superluminal motions and unification schemes. We propose that those extreme flares may result from radiative deceleration of blobs on scales where local dissipation occurs. The minimum jet power estimated from the resolved synchrotron emission on VLBI scales appears to be consistent with this model. It is shown that if the energy distribution of nonthermal electrons accelerated locally in the blob is reasonably flat, then a background radiation field having a luminosity in the range 10${}^{41}-10^{42}$ erg s${}^{-1}$ can give rise to a substantial deceleration of the blob, but still be transparent enough to allow the TeV $\gamma$-rays thereby produced to escape the system.

9 pages, submitted to ApJL

References in corpus (5)

• Fast variability of TeV gamma-rays from the radio galaxy M 87
• Dynamics and High Energy Emission of the Flaring HST-1 Knot in the M 87 Jet
• Superluminal Radio Features in the M87 Jet and the Site of Flaring TeV Gamma-ray Emission
• Observations of Mkn 421 with the MAGIC Telescope
• High-Energy Aspects of Astrophysical Jets

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Fast TeV variability in blazars: jets in a jet
• Synchrotron Self-Compton Analysis of TeV X-ray Selected BL Lacertae Objects
• Spine-sheath layer radiative interplay in subparsec-scale jets and the TeV emission from M87
• Recollimation and Radiative Focusing of Relativistic Jets: Applications to Blazars and M87
• Magnetic reconnection and plasmoid formation in three-dimensional accretion flows around black holes
• Multi-frequency, Multi-Epoch Study of Mrk 501: Hints for a two-component nature of the emission
• X-ray and gamma-ray variability of Mrk 421
• Probing the central black hole in M87 with gamma-rays
• Shear Acceleration in Expanding Flows
• Synchrotron Self-Compton Model for PKS 2155-304
• Collimation and Radiative Deceleration of Jets in TeV AGNs