External compton emission in blazars of nonlinear synchrotron self-compton-cooled electrons

Abstract

The origin of the high-energy component in spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of blazars is still something of a mystery. While BL Lac objects can be successfully modeled within the one-zone synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) scenario, the SED of low-peaked flat spectrum radio quasars is more difficult to reproduce. Their high-energy component needs the abundance of strong external photon sources, giving rise to stronger cooling via the inverse Compton (IC) channel, and thus to a powerful component in the SED. Recently, we have been able to show that such a powerful inverse Compton component can also be achieved within the SSC framework. This, however, is only possible if the electrons cool by SSC, which results in a nonlinear process, since the cooling depends on an energy integral over the electrons. In this paper, we aim to compare the nonlinear SSC framework with the external Compton (EC) output by calculating analytically the EC component with the underlying electron distribution being either linearly or nonlinearly cooled. Due to the additional linear cooling of the electrons with the external photons, higher number densities of electrons are required to achieve nonlinear cooling, resulting in more powerful IC components. If the electrons initially cool nonlinearly, the resulting SED can exhibit a dominant SSC over the EC component. However, this dominance depends strongly on the input parameters. We conclude that, with the correct time-dependent treatment, the SSC component should be taken into account in modeling blazar flares. © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..