Insights into the particle acceleration of a peculiar gamma-ray radio galaxy IC 310
by
Julian Sitarek
(IFAE)
→
Europe/Madrid
Seminar (IFAE)
Seminar
IFAE
Description
The radio galaxy IC 310 has recently been identified as a gamma-ray
emitter based on observations at GeV energies with Fermi-LAT and at
very high energies (VHE, E > 100 GeV) with the MAGIC
telescopes. Despite IC 310 having been classified as a radio galaxy
with the jet observed at an angle > 10 degree, it exhibits a mixture
of multiwavelength properties of a radio galaxy and a blazar, possibly
making it a transitional object. On the night of 12/13th of November
2012 the MAGIC telescopes observed a series of violent outbursts from
the direction of IC 310 with flux-doubling time scales faster than 5
min and a peculiar spectrum spreading over 2 order of magnitude. Such
fast variability constrains the size of the emission region to be
smaller than the gravitational radius of its central black hole
challenging the shock acceleration models, commonly used in
explanation of gamma-ray radiation from active galaxies. Here we will
show that this emission can be associated with pulsar-like particle
acceleration by the electric field across a magnetospheric gap at the
base of the jet.