Plasma effects on relativistic pair beams from TeV blazars: PIC simulations and analytical predictions

Abstract

Pair beams produced by very high-energy radiation from TeV blazars emit gamma rays in the GeV band by inverse-Compton scattering of soft photons. The observed GeV-band signal is smaller than that expected from the full electromagnetic cascade. This means that the pair beams must be affected by other physical processes reducing their energy flux. One possible loss mechanism involves beam-plasma instabilities that we consider in the present work. For realistic parameters the pair beams can not be simulated by modern computers. Instead, we use a simple analytical model to find a range of the beam parameters that (i) provides a physical picture similar to that of realistic pair beams and (ii) at the same time can be handled by available computational resources. Afterwards, we performed corresponding 2D PIC simulations. We confirm that the beams experience only small changes in the relevant parameter regime, and other processes such as deflection in magnetic field must be at play.

arXiv comment11 pages, 19 figures, 1table, accepted for publication in A&A

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Cited by in corpus (11)

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• PIC Simulation Methods for Cosmic Radiation and Plasma Instabilities
• The electrostatic instability for realistic pair distributions in blazar/EBL cascades
• The role of resonant plasma instabilities in the evolution of blazar induced pair beams
• Revisit of non-linear Landau damping for electrostatic instability driven by blazar-induced pair beams
• Suppression of the TeV pair-beam plasma instability by a tangled weak intergalactic magnetic field
• Intergalactic magnetic field studies by means of $\gamma$-ray emission from GRB 190114C
• Prospects for detection of the pair-echo emission from TeV gamma-ray bursts
• Constraining blazar heating with the 2<z<3 Lyman-$\alpha$ forest
• MeV cosmic-ray electrons modify the TeV pair-beam plasma instability
• Simulations of Astrophysically Relevant Pair Beam Instabilities in a Laboratory Context