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Paper: Thermal Non-jet Flares in Active Galactic Nuclei
Volume: 427, Accretion and Ejection in AGN: a Global View
Page: 118
Authors: Tammi, J.; Hovatta, T.
Abstract: We present preliminary results of an ongoing study to test the possibility of thermal flares caused by a collapsing accretion disk in quasar/-microquasar objects. We use a simple toy model to estimate the observable signatures of an event where the matter originating from the disk expands rapidly and radiates mainly bremsstrahlung radiation, thus leading to a short flare visible in the optical waveband but not in radio. Together with the emergence of a new jet component afterwards, this first flare forms a double-peaked optical lightcurve with only one radio flare coinciding with the latter optical burst – as observed e.g. in BL Lac (Marscher et al. 2008). The same general picture is suspected to work for example in the microquasar Cygnus X-3 (Miller-Jones et al., in preparation) where it would lead to double radio peaks. Apart from a few quantitative tests the physical “big picture” is still mostly qualitative.
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