Time Dependent Hadronic Modeling of Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars

TL;DR

This paper presents a new time-dependent lepto-hadronic model for blazar emission, incorporating secondary particle radiation, and explores how different perturbations affect multi-band lightcurves and neutrino emission, providing potential observational signatures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel time-dependent lepto-hadronic model that includes secondary particle radiation and analyzes its response to parameter perturbations in blazar flares.

Findings

Flaring from increased Fermi II acceleration efficiency causes correlated multi-band lightcurves and a plateau in HE gamma-rays.

A change in proton injection spectral index produces a distinctive dip in the HE gamma-ray lightcurve.

Predicted signatures could help identify hadronic processes in blazar variability.

Abstract

We introduce a new time-dependent lepto-hadronic model for blazar emission that takes into account the radiation emitted by secondary particles, such as pions and muons, from photo hadronic interactions. Starting from a baseline parameter set guided by a fit to the spectral energy distribution of the blazar 3C 279, we perform a parameter study to investigate the effects of perturbations of the input parameters to mimic different flaring events to study the resulting lightcurves in the optical, X-ray, high energy (HE: E > 100 MeV) and very-high-energy (VHE: E > 100 GeV) gamma-rays as well as the neutrino emission associated with charged-pion and muon decay. We find that flaring events from an increase in the efficiency of Fermi II acceleration will produce a positive correlation between all bandpasses and a marked plateau in the HE gamma-ray lightcurve. We also predict a distinctive dip in the HE lightcurve for perturbations caused by a change in the proton injection spectral index. These plateaus / dips could be a tell tale signature of hadronic models for perturbations that lead to more efficient acceleration of high energy protons in parameter regimes where pion and muon synchrotron emission is non-negligible.