https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20136105003
Leptonic and Hadronic Modeling of Fermi-Detected Blazars
Spectral Energy Distribution Modeling and High-Energy Polarization Predictions
1 Centre for Space Research, North-West University, Potchefstroom, 2531, South Africa
2 Astrophysical Institute, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ohio University, Athens OH 45701, USA
3 Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstraße 25, A-6020, Innsbruck, Austria
a e-mail: Markus.Bottcher@nwu.ac.za
b e-mail: Anita.Reimer@uibk.ac.at
c e-mail: zhangh@phy.ohiou.edu
Published online: 9 December 2013
We describe new implementations of leptonic and hadronic models for the broadband emission from relativistic jets in AGN in a temporary steady state. The new model implementations are used to fit snap-shot spectral energy distributions of a representative set of Fermi-LAT detected blazars from the first LAT AGN catalogue. We find that the leptonic model is capable of producing acceptable fits to the SEDs of almost all blazars with reasonable parameters close to equipartition between the magnetic field and the relativistic electron population. If charge neutrality in leptonic models is provided by cold protons, our fits indicate that the kinetic energy carried by the jet should be dominated by protons. We also find satisfactory representations of the snapshot SEDs of most blazars in our sample with the hadronic model presented here. All of our hadronic model fits require powers in relativistic protons in the range 1047 – 1049 erg/s. As a potential way to distinguish between the leptonic and hadronic high-energy emission models considered here, we suggest diagnostics based on the predicted X-ray and γ-ray polarization, which are drastically different for the two types of models.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2013
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
