Paper detail

Synchrotron Lightcurves of blazars in a time-dependent synchrotron-self Compton cooling scenario

Blazars emit non-thermal radiation in all frequency bands from radio to γ-rays. Additionally, they often exhibit rapid flaring events at all frequencies with doubling time scale of the TeV and X-ray flux on the order of minutes, and such rapid flaring events are hard to explain theoretically. We explore the effect of the synchrotron-self Compton cooling, which is inherently time-dependent, leading to a rapid cooling of the electrons. Having discussed intensively the resulting effects of this cooling scenario on the spectral energy distribution of blazars in previous papers, the effects of the time-dependent approach on the synchrotron lightcurve are investigated here. Taking into account the retardation due to the finite size of the source and the source geometry, we show that the time-dependent synchrotron-self Compton (SSC) cooling still has profound effects on the lightcurve compared to the usual linear (synchrotron and external Compton) cooling terms. This is most obvious if the SSC cooling takes longer than the light crossing time scale. Then in most frequency bands the variability time scale is up to an order of magnitude shorter than under linear cooling conditions. This is yet another strong indication that the time-dependent approach should be taken into account for modeling blazar flares from compact emission regions.