2006/12/19 by J. E. Carson, J. Kildea, R. A. Ong +15 · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/516818
published as Astrophys.J.662:199-204,2007 · 16 pages, 4 figures, submitted to ApJ
arxiv created 2006/12/19 · openalex publication_date 2007/06/06 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
According to leptonic models for the high-energy emission from blazars, relativistic electrons in the inner jets inverse-Compton scatter photons from a variety of sources. Seed photons are certainly introduced via the synchrotron process from the electrons themselves, but external sources of seed photons may also be present. In this paper, we present detailed derivations of the equations describing external inverse-Compton scattering from two sources of seed photons: direct emission from the accretion disk, and accretion disk photons that have scattered off the broad line region. For each source, we derive the seed photon spectrum incident on the jet, the single electron energy loss rate, and the emitted photon spectrum.