On the hadronic cascade scenario for extreme BL Lacs

Abstract

The peculiar high-energy emission spectrum of the so-called extreme BL Lacs (EHBL) challenges the standard emission models of blazars. Among the possible solutions, the so-called hadronic cascade scenario assumes that the observed high-energy radiation is produced in the intergalactic space through photo-hadronic reactions by ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) with energies up to 1019−20 eV beamed by the blazar jet. Under the assumption – implicit in this model – that the intrinsic high-energy synchrotron self-Compton emission of the blazar does not substantially contribute to the observed γ-ray spectrum, we derive constraints to the basic physical quantities of the jet and we compare them with the requirements of the hadronic cascade scenario. We found that, for a plausible range of relativistic jet Doppler factors (δ = 10–50), the maximum achievable energy of the accelerated protons can exceed 2 × 1019 eV with jet powers of the order of ≈1044 erg s−1, parameters compatible with the requests of the hadronic scenario even if EHBL are embedded in magnetic fields of cosmic filaments. We also discuss the consequences of our results for the possibility that local EHBL contribute to the observed UHECR.