Multi-TeV flaring from blazars: Markarian 421 a case study

TL;DR

This paper models multi-TeV flaring in blazar Markarian 421 as proton interactions within a hadronic framework, explaining orphan flares and predicting similar phenomena in other blazars.

Contribution

It introduces a hadronic model explaining orphan flares in blazars through proton-photon interactions, fitting observed spectra during flaring episodes.

Findings

TeV flares lack lower energy counterparts, indicating orphan flares.

Flaring spectra are well fitted by proton interactions with background photons.

Potential for future orphan flares in Mrk 501 and PG 1553+113.

Abstract

The TeV blazar Markarian 421 underwent multi-TeV flaring during April 2004 and simultaneously observed in x-ray and TeV energies. It was observed that the TeV outbursts had no counterparts in the lower energies, which implies that this might be an orphan flare. In the context of hadronic model, we have shown that this multi-TeV flaring can be produced due to the interaction of Fermi-accelerated protons of energy $\lesssim 168$ TeV with the background photons in the low energy tail of the synchrotron self-Compton spectrum of the blazar jet. We fit very well the flaring spectrum with this model. Based on this study, we speculate that Mrk 501 and PG 1553+113 are possible candidates for orphan flaring in the future.