Photohadronic modelling of the 2010 gamma-ray flare from Mrk 421

Rosales de León, Alberto; Brown, Anthony M; Chadwick, Paula M

Abstract

Blazars are a subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that have a relativistic jet with a small viewing angle towards the observer. Recent results based on hadronic scenarios have motivated an ongoing discussion of how a blazar can produce high energy neutrinos during a flaring state and which scenario can successfully describe the observed gamma-ray behaviour. Markarian 421 is one of the closest and brightest objects in the extragalactic gamma-ray sky and showed flaring activity over a 14-days period in 2010 March. In this work, we describe the performed analysis of Fermi-LAT data from the source focused on the MeV range (100 MeV–1 GeV), and study the possibility of a contribution coming from the pγ interactions between protons and MeV SSC target photons to fit the very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission. The fit results were compared with two leptonic models (one-zone and two-zone) using the Akaike Information Criteria (AIC) test, which evaluates goodness-of-fit alongside the simplicity of the model. In all cases, the photohadronic model was favoured as a better fit description in comparison to the one-zone leptonic model, and with respect to the two-zone model in the majority of cases. Our results show the potential of a photohadronic contribution to a lepto-hadronic origin of gamma-ray flux of blazars. Future gamma-ray observations above tens of TeV and below 100 MeV in energy will be crucial to test and discriminate between models.

Citation

Rosales de León, A., Brown, A. M., & Chadwick, P. M. (2021). Photohadronic modelling of the 2010 gamma-ray flare from Mrk 421. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 501(2), 2198-2208. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa3839

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 9, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Dec 12, 2020
• Publication Date: 2021-02
• Deposit Date: Jan 4, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 4, 2021
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Print ISSN: 0035-8711
• Electronic ISSN: 1365-2966
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 501
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 2198-2208
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa3839
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1254414