A Study of Particle Acceleration in Blazar Jets

Abstract

Abstract The particle acceleration of blazar jets is crucial to high-energy astrophysics, yet the acceleration mechanism division in blazar subclasses and the underlying nature of these mechanisms remain elusive. In this work, we utilized the synchrotron spectral information (synchrotron peak frequency, log ν sy , and corresponding curvature, b sy) of 2705 blazars from the literature and studied the subject of particle acceleration in blazar jets by analyzing the correlation between log ν sy and 1/b sy. Our results suggested that the entire sample follows an energy-dependent probability acceleration (EDPA). Specifically, the low inverse Compton peak sources (LCPs) follow the mechanism of fluctuations of fractional gain acceleration (FFGA), while the high inverse Compton peak sources (HCPs) follow an acceleration mechanism of EDPA. Our results indicated that the separation between LCPs and HCPs results from the electron peak Lorentz factor (γ p), and the differentiation should originate from different acceleration mechanisms. Moreover, our study revealed a transition in the acceleration mechanism from FFGA to EDPA around log ν sy ∼ 15 through a detailed analysis of binned- log ν sy . The mechanism of FFGA dominates the particle acceleration in LCP jets because of stronger jets and the EDPA dominates the particle energy gain in the HCPs due to a more efficient acceleration process.