Soft X-ray precursors of the non-thermal flares in blazars - theoretical predictions

Abstract

Popular internal shock models, developed to explain production of high energy flares in blazar jets, involve collisions between local overdensities of matter being ejected by a central engine and moving along the jet with different velocities. Prior to such collisions, the matter is relatively cold and therefore does not produce intrinsic non-thermal radiation. However, due to Comptonization of external radiation by cold electrons, the presence of such matter should be apparent by prominent precursor soft X-ray flares, visible prior to non-thermal $\gamma$-ray flares. In this paper we discuss the predicted properties of such precursors and study the dependence of their properties (luminosities and light curves) on kinematic parameters of relativistic ejecta and on an angle of view. We demonstrate that the lack of evidence for luminous soft X-ray precursors can be reconciled with our predictions for their properties if acceleration and collimation of a jet takes about three distance decades. We briefly discuss the severe constraints on the internal shock models that would be imposed by a non-detection of such precursors.

arXiv comment20 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

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• Suzaku Observations of Luminous Quasars: Revealing the Nature of High-Energy Blazar Emission in Quiescent States
• Bulk Comptonization of the Cosmic Microwave Background by Extragalactic Jets as a Probe of their Matter Content
• Evidence for a significant mixture of electron/positron pairs in FRII jets constrained by cocoon dynamics
• Suzaku Observations of Extreme MeV Blazar SWIFT J0746.3+2548
• Detection techniques for the H.E.S.S. II telescope, data modeling of gravitational lensing and emission of blazars in HE-VHE astronomy
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