Blazar Flares from Compton Dragged Shells

Abstract

We compute the dynamics and emission of dissipative shells that are subject to a strong Compton drag, under simplifying assumptions about the dissipation mechanism. We show that under conditions prevailing in blazars, substantial deceleration is anticipated on sub-parsec and parsec scales in cases of rapid dissipation. Such episodes may be the origin of some of the flaring activity occasionally observed in gamma ray blazars. The shape of the light curves thereby produced reflects the geometry of the emitting surface if the deceleration is very rapid, or the dynamics of the shell if the deceleration is delayed, or initially more gradual, owing, e.g., to continuous injection of energy and momentum.

18 pages, 5 figures, accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (7)

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• The effect of Compton drag on the dynamics of dissipative Poynting dominated flows: Implications for the unification of radio loud AGN
• On the deceleration of relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei I: Radiation drag
• Dynamics of Relativistic Shock Waves Subject to a Strong Radiation Drag: Similarity Solutions and Numerical Simulations