Production of TeV Gamma Radiation in the Vicinity of the Supermassive Black Hole in the Giant Radio Galaxy M87

Abstract

Although the giant radio galaxy M87 harbors many distinct regions of broadband nonthermal emission, the recently reported fast variability of TeV γ-rays from M87, on a timescale of days, strongly constrains the range of speculations concerning the possible sites and scenarios of particle acceleration responsible for the observed TeV emission. A natural production site of this radiation is the immediate vicinity of the central supermassive black hole (BH). Because of its low bolometric luminosity, the nucleus of M87 can be effectively transparent for γ-rays up to an energy of 10 TeV, which makes this source an ideal laboratory for the study of particle acceleration processes close to the BH event horizon. We critically analyze different possible radiation mechanisms in this region and argue that the observed very high energy γ-ray emission can be explained as the inverse Compton emission of ultrarelativistic electron-positron pairs produced through the development of an electromagnetic cascade in the BH magnetosphere. We demonstrate, through detailed numerical calculations of acceleration and radiation of electrons in the magnetospheric vacuum gap, that this pulsar magnetosphere-like scenario can satisfactorily explain the main properties of the TeV γ-ray emission from M87.