Analytical Constraints on the Radius and Bulk Lorentz Factor in the Lepto-Hadronic One-Zone Model of BL Lacs

TL;DR

This paper investigates the parameter constraints of a lepto-hadronic model for neutrino-emitting BL Lac objects, revealing that the model often requires unphysically high proton luminosities and may not adequately explain observed neutrino associations.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of the parameter space in the one-zone lepto-hadronic model for BL Lacs, highlighting limitations and the need for alternative explanations.

Findings

Parameter space is sensitive to proton distribution.

Injected proton luminosity often exceeds Eddington limit.

Simple one-zone model may not explain BL Lac--neutrino associations.

Abstract

In this work, we study the parameter space of neutrino-emitting BL Lacs under the framework of the one-zone lepto-hadronic model. We show that constraints on the model come from various aspects of observations such as the variability timescale of blazar flares, gamma-ray opacity and the spectral energy distribution of electromagnetic emission, as well as the inferred neutrino emissivity of the blazar. We apply our method to two potential neutrino sources, i.e., TXS 0506+056 and PKS 0735+178, which are BL Lacs. Then, we explore and summarize the allowed range of parameters such as the bulk Lorentz factor and the blob radius under different distributions of injected protons. We find that the parameter space that is available to explain the BL Lac--neutrino association is sensitive to the proton distribution, and usually, an injected proton luminosity significantly exceeding the Eddington luminosity is required for both sources. Our results suggest that the simple lepto-hadronic one-zone model may not be a reasonable interpretation for BL Lac--neutrino associations.