Correlation between emission-line luminosity and gamma-ray dominance in the blazar 3C 279

Abstract

Despite numerous studies, the origin of the gamma-ray emission from blazars is still debated, in particular whether it is produced by leptonic or hadronic processes. In this study, we are testing the leptonic scenario for the Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar (FSRQ) 3C 279, assuming that the gamma-ray emission is generated by inverse Compton scattering of external target photons from Broad Line Region (IC-BLR scenario). For this purpose we use a 10-year data set of the source consisting of the optical spectroscopy data from the Steward Observatory blazar monitoring program and Fermi-LAT gamma-ray data. We search for a possible correlation between the Compton dominance and the emission line luminosity using the discrete correlation function (DCF) analysis. As a result, we find no significant correlation between these two quantities at any time lag value, while the emission line luminosity displays a moderate correlation with the gamma-ray flux at a zero time lag. We also reveal that the optical synchrotron continuum flux shows a pronounced correlation with the gamma-ray flux, and therefore we interpret these results within the leptonic IC-BLR scenario where the Compton dominance variations are primarily induced by changes in the magnetic field, rather than in the emission line luminosity.

16 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Effects of non-continuous inverse Compton cooling in blazars
• Blazar flares from plasma blobs crossing the broad-line region