A Two-zone Photohadronic Interpretation of the EHBL-like Behavior of the 2016 Multi-TeV Flares of 1ES 1959+650

Abstract

The high-energy-peaked blazar 1ES 1959+650 is a well-known and well-studied nearby blazar that has undergone several episodes of multi-TeV flaring. In 2002 for the first time an orphan TeV flare was observed from this blazar. During a multiwavelength campaign from 2016 April 29 to November 21, MAGIC telescopes observed multi-TeV flarings during the nights of 2016 June 13 and 14 and July 1 when the position of the synchrotron peak was found to be above 10 17 Hz. Also observed was that the second peak of the spectral energy distribution shifted toward higher energy and exhibited extreme HBL-like behavior. The photohadronic model, which is very successful at explaining the multi-TeV flaring from many high energy blazars, including 1ES 1959+650, is applied to study the flaring events of 2016. It is observed that the photohadronic model is unable to explain the observed spectra. Here, we use a two-zone photohadronic model to explain the observed spectra. We clearly demonstrate that the low energy regime (zone-1) of the spectra corresponds to the standard flaring events of the high energy blazar and the high energy regime (zone-2) of the spectra is solely due to the extreme nature of the flaring events. Our two-zone photohadronic model explains the multi-TeV flaring events observed by MAGIC telescopes very well.