Implications of time-dependent injection in relativistic jets

Abstract

Rapid blazar flaring events and their rich behavior require time-dependent modeling. One important approach is time-dependent injection causing non-linear cooling effects, since the inevitable SSC cooling depends on the time-dependent electron distribution function γ˙∝∫γ2n(γ,t)dγ. This results in a collective and faster energy loss of the electrons in the jet, which could explain the extremely short variability times. The most obvious result of the non-linear cooling is the appearance of unique breaks in the time-integrated SED, which would normally be attributed to a complicated electron distribution. The knowledge of the observation time is important to interpret the observed spectra, because of the non-trivial evolution of the time-dependent SED. Intrinsic gamma-gamma absorption processes in the emission region are only of minor importance