2017/06/15 by Partha Pratim Basumallick, Nayantara Gupta
Physics and Astronomy · #Anisotropy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #BL Lac object #Blazar #Collimated light #Compton scattering #Cosmic microwave background #Electron #Galaxy #Gamma ray #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Jet (fluid) #Lorentz factor #Lorentz transformation #Luminosity #Magnetic field #Nuclear physics #Optics #Photon #Physics #Proton #Proton Synchrotron #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Synchrotron #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa7a12
9 pages, 7 figures, Accepted in ApJ
arxiv created 2017/06/15 · openalex created_date 2017/06/23 · openalex publication_date 2017/07/20 · arxiv updated 2017/08/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract The multiwavelength photon spectrum from the BL Lac object AP Librae extends from radio to TeV gamma rays. The X-ray to very high-energy gamma-ray emission from the extended jet of this source has been modeled with inverse Compton (IC) scattering of relativistic electrons off the cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons. The IC/CMB model requires the kpc-scale extended jet to be highly collimated with a bulk Lorentz factor close to 10. Here we discuss the possibility of a proton synchrotron origin of X-rays and gamma rays from the extended jet with a bulk Lorentz factor of 3. This scenario requires an extreme proton energy of 3.98 × 10 21 eV and a high magnetic field of 1 mG of the extended jet with jet power ∼5 × 10 48 erg s −1 in particles and the magnetic field (which is more than 100 times the Eddington luminosity of AP Librae) to explain the very high-energy gamma-ray emission. Moreover, we have shown that X-ray emission from the extended jets of 3C 273 and PKS 0637-752 could be possible by proton synchrotron emission with jet power comparable to the Eddington luminosities.