Flaring of Blazars from an Analytical, Time-dependent Model for Combined Synchrotron and Synchrotron Self-Compton Radiative Losses of Multiple Ultrarelativistic Electron Populations

TL;DR

This paper introduces an analytical, time-dependent model for blazar flares that accounts for multiple electron injections and radiative processes, providing insights into observed broad-band emissions.

Contribution

It presents the first fully analytical, multi-injection, time-dependent leptonic model for blazar flares, including synchrotron and SSC losses, with explicit calculations of electron densities and intensities.

Findings

Model reproduces broad-band observational data.

Analytical solutions for electron densities and intensities.

Parameter study shows effects of magnetic field and Doppler factor.

Abstract

We present a fully analytical, time-dependent leptonic one-zone model that describes a simplified radiation process of multiple interacting ultrarelativistic electron populations, accounting for the flaring of GeV blazars. In this model, several mono-energetic, ultrarelativistic electron populations are successively and instantaneously injected into the emission region, i.e., a magnetized plasmoid propagating along the blazar jet, and subjected to linear, time-independent synchrotron radiative losses, which are caused by a constant magnetic field, and nonlinear, time-dependent synchrotron self-Compton radiative losses in the Thomson limit. Considering a general multiple-injection scenario is, from a physical point of view, more realistic than the usual single-injection scenario invoked in common blazar models, as blazar jets may extend over tens of kiloparsecs and, thus, most likely pick up several particle populations from intermediate clouds. We analytically compute the electron number density by solving a kinetic equation using Laplace transformations and the method of matched asymptotic expansions. Moreover, we explicitly calculate the optically thin synchrotron intensity, the synchrotron self-Compton intensity in the Thomson limit, as well as the associated total fluences. In order to mimic injections of finite duration times and radiative transport, we model flares by sequences of these instantaneous injections, suitably distributed over the entire emission region. Finally, we present a parameter study for the total synchrotron and synchrotron self-Compton fluence spectral energy distributions for a generic three-injection scenario, varying the magnetic field strength, the Doppler factor, and the initial electron energy of the first injection in realistic parameter domains, demonstrating that our model can reproduce the typical broad-band behavior seen in observational data.