Acceleration of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays in the Colliding Shells of Blazars and GRBs: Constraints from the Fermi Gamma ray Space Telescope

Abstract

Fermi Gamma ray Space Telescope measurements of spectra, variability time scale, and maximum photon energy give lower limits to the apparent jet powers and, through gammagamma opacity arguments, the bulk Lorentz factors of relativistic jets. The maximum cosmic-ray particle energy is limited by these two quantities in Fermi acceleration scenarios. Recent data are used to constrain the maximum energies of cosmic-ray protons and Fe nuclei accelerated in colliding shells of GRBs and blazars. The Fermi results indicate that Fe rather than protons are more likely to be accelerated to ultra-high energies in AGNs, whereas powerful GRBs can accelerate both protons and Fe to >~ 10^{20} eV. Emissivity of nonthermal radiation from radio galaxies and blazars is estimated from the First Fermi AGN Catalog, and shown to favor BL Lac objects and FR1 radio galaxies over flat spectrum radio quasars, FR2 radio galaxies, and long-duration GRBs as the sources of UHECRs.

8 pages, 3 figures, ApJ, in press

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Cited by in corpus (14)

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• Gamma-Ray and Neutrino Backgrounds as Probes of the High-Energy Universe: Hints of Cascades, General Constraints, and Implications for TeV Searches
• High-energy cosmic ray nuclei from tidal disruption events: Origin, survival, and implications
• A Neutral Beam Model for High-Energy Neutrino Emission from the Blazar TXS 0506+056
• Multi-Messenger Physics with the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Gamma Ray Bursts
• Constraining the Emissivity of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays in the Distant Universe with the Diffuse Gamma-ray Emission
• Multi-collision internal shock lepto-hadronic models for energetic GRBs
• Cosmogenic gamma-ray and neutrino fluxes from blazars associated with IceCube events
• Bounds on the origin of extragalactic ultrahigh energy cosmic rays from the IceCube neutrino observations
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• Gamma-ray counterparts of 2WHSP high-synchrotron-peaked BL Lac objects as possible signatures of ultra-high-energy cosmic-ray emission
• Correlation between Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Rays and Active Galactic Nuclei from Fermi Large Area Telescope