A combined radio and GeV gamma-ray view of the 2012 and 2013 flares of Mrk 421

TL;DR

This study compares radio and gamma-ray flares of Mrk 421 in 2012 and 2013, modeling their connection with a one-zone SSC framework, revealing the complexity of linking radio and gamma-ray emissions during extreme flares.

Contribution

The paper applies a combined radio and gamma-ray observational approach with SSC modeling to analyze two major flares of Mrk 421, highlighting the challenges in explaining radio-gamma correlations.

Findings

2012 flare exhibited a sharp radio flare not explained by simple SSC model.

Doppler beaming variations can account for the radio flare in some scenarios.

Model parameters require fine tuning to match the observed radio and gamma-ray features.

Abstract

In 2012 Markarian 421 underwent the largest flare ever observed in this blazar at radio frequencies. In the present study, we start exploring this unique event and compare it to a less extreme event in 2013. We use 15 GHz radio data obtained with the Owens Valley Radio Observatory 40-m telescope, 95 GHz millimeter data from the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy, and GeV gamma-ray data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The radio light curves during the flaring periods in 2012 and 2013 have very different appearances, both in shape and peak flux density. Assuming that the radio and gamma-ray flares are physically connected, we attempt to model the most prominent sub-flares of the 2012 and 2013 activity periods by using the simplest possible theoretical framework. We first fit a one-zone synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) model to the less extreme 2013 flare and estimate parameters describing the emission region. We then model the major gamma-ray and radio flares of 2012 using the same framework. The 2012 gamma-ray flare shows two distinct spikes of similar amplitude, so we examine scenarios associating the radio flare with each spike in turn. In the first scenario, we cannot explain the sharp radio flare with a simple SSC model, but we can accommodate this by adding plausible time variations to the Doppler beaming factor. In the second scenario, a varying Doppler factor is not needed, but the SSC model parameters require fine tuning. Both alternatives indicate that the sharp radio flare, if physically connected to the preceding gamma-ray flares, can be reproduced only for a very specific choice of parameters.