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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 92: Gammaastronomie 4

T 92.6: Talk

Thursday, March 1, 2012, 18:00–18:15, ZHG 008

Investigation of the energy spectrum of blazars based on the measured data from Markarian 501 — •Michaela Voth and Julia K. Becker — Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie, Theoretische Physik IV, Germany

The BL Lacertae object Markarian 501 is a very high energy blazar. The measured spectral energy distribution (SED) shows the characteristic double-peaked profile. The peak at lower energies attributes to synchrotron radiation from relativistic electrons and positrons within the blazar jets. There are two different theories favored as candidates for the interpretation of the high energy peak: the leptonic and the hadronic model. In the leptonic model the high energy emission can be explained with the Inverse Compton effect. In the hadronic model the second peak is interpreted as a result of neutral pion decay into gammas, originating from the interact Ion of protons with the photon field. In the context of those different models the energy spectrum will be discussed. To analyse the characteristics of the SED it is necessary to solve the kinetic equation for the electron population inside the radiation source. In order to examine the maximum energy of the energy spectrum, the gamma-gamma opacity is investigated. It depends on the energy and follows from the electron number density and the cross section. Finally, the analysis is expected to extract the energy value at which the high energy source becomes optically thick for gamma-gamma interactions. This result can be compared to the measurement data.