SIMBAD references

High-energy photons propagating in the magnetized medium with large velocity gradients can mediate energy and momentum exchange. Conversion of these photons into electron-positron pairs in the field of soft photons with the consequent isotropization and emission of new high-energy photons by Compton scattering can lead to the runaway cascade of the high-energy photons and electron-positron pairs fed by the bulk energy of the flow. This is the essence of the photon breeding mechanism.

We study the problem of high-energy emission of relativistic jets in blazars via photon breeding mechanism using 2D ballistic model for the jet with the detailed treatment of particle propagation and interactions. Our numerical simulations from first principles demonstrate that a jet propagating in the soft radiation field of broad emission-line region can convert a significant fraction (up to 80 per cent) of its total power into radiation.

We show that the gamma-ray background of similar energy density as observed at Earth is sufficient to trigger the photon breeding. The considered mechanism produces a population of high-energy leptons and, therefore, alleviates the need for Fermi-type particle acceleration models in relativistic flows. The mechanism reproduces basic spectral features observed in blazars including the blazar sequence (shift of spectral peaks towards lower energies with increasing luminosity). The significant deceleration of the jet at subparsec scales and the transversal gradient of the Lorentz factor (so-called structured jet) predicted by the model reconcile the discrepancy between the high Doppler factors determined by the fits to the spectra of TeV blazars and the low apparent velocities observed at very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) scales. The mechanism produces significantly broader angular distribution of radiation than that predicted by a simple model assuming the isotropic emission in the jet frame. This helps to reconcile the observed statistics and luminosity ratio of Fanaroff-Riley type I (FR I) and BL Lac objects with the large Lorentz factors of the jets as well as to explain the high level of the TeV emission in the radio galaxy M87.

We also discuss other possible sites of operation of the photon breeding mechanism and demonstrate that the accretion disc radiation at the scale of about 100 Schwarzschild radii and the infrared radiation from the dust at a parsec scale can serve as targets for photon breeding.