A model for delayed emission in a very-high energy gamma-ray flare in Markarian 501

Abstract

Recently, the MAGIC collaboration reported evidence for a delay in the arrival times of photons of different energies during a gamma-ray flare from the blazar Markarian 501 on 2005 July 9. We apply a homogeneous synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) model under the assumption that the blob containing relativistic electrons was observed in its acceleration phase. This modified SSC model predicts the appearance of a gamma-ray flare first at lower energies and subsequently at higher energies. Based on the reported time delay of approx. 240 s between the flare observed at 190 GeV and 2.7 TeV, we predict a delay on the order of 1 h if observed between 10 GeV and 100 GeV. Such delay timescales can be tested in the future by simultaneous flare observations with the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) and Cherenkov telescopes.

4 pages, no figures, Astronomy & Astrophysics in press

References in corpus (1)

• Implications of very rapid TeV variability in blazars

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Probing quantum gravity using photons from a flare of the active galactic nucleus Markarian 501 observed by the MAGIC telescope
• A new method to study energy-dependent arrival delays on photons from astrophysical sources
• String Quantum Gravity, Lorentz-Invariance Violation and Gamma-Ray Astronomy
• Particle-acceleration timescales in TeV blazar flares
• On the rapid TeV flaring activity of Markarian 501