Speaker
Description
Blazars and radio galaxies are famously known to be variable sources across the entire electromagnetic spectrum due to the rather close alignment of their jet with our line of sight and relativistic jet speeds. In the very high-energy (E > 100 GeV) gamma rays, the fastest flares reach hour-to-minute timescales that cannot be explained by the typical shock acceleration scenario. Magnetic reconnection has been proposed as a prospective mechanism on several blazar cases, and models have been applied successfully via a simulated light curve comparison. We build on the past work by using particle-in-cell simulations of plasmoids generated in a relativistic reconnection event in combination with radiative transfer to describe an extremely fast flaring event of the radio galaxy IC 310. Using literature values to restrict our initial simulation priors and by varying the unknowns, we obtain 360 simulated reconnection scenarios. Via a statistical comparison adapted from our previous work, we search for models that reproduce the observed light curves. The results of our analysis show that simulations that produce realistic light curves and spectra are necessary in gaining a better understanding of the parameters that describe the jet physics.