The Proton Blazar

TL;DR

This paper models blazar emission by including shock-accelerated protons and electrons, explaining the broad spectrum and variability, and predicts neutrino fluxes potentially observable with current experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive model incorporating protons and electrons in blazar jets to explain multi-wavelength emission and variability, and estimates neutrino fluxes.

Findings

Protons contribute to X-ray and gamma-ray emission.

Electrons account for infrared to optical emission.

Neutrino fluxes may be detectable with HiRes.

Abstract

Considering shock-accelerated protons in addition to electrons in a synchrotron radio jet naturally produces the observed X- through gamma ray continuum emission of flat-spectrum radio-loud AGN, whereas the corresponding shock-accelerated electrons produce the infrared through optical continuum. All of these emission components are rapidly variable on short time scales which can be accounted for by a common origin of the blazar emission in a relativistic sub-parsec scale jet. Moreover, neutrino fluxes are estimated which may be observable with the HiRes experiment and the impact on the ISM of the host galaxy of neutrons escaping from the nuclear jet is investigated.