X-ray Fourier lag-frequency spectra modulated by stochastic turbulent acceleration in the jets of high-frequency-peaked BL Lac
Guang-Cheng Xiao, Wen Hu, Da-Guo Jiang, Jun-Xian Wang, Zhen-Yi Cai, Da-Hai Yan, Fang-Wu Lu
astro-ph.HE, hep-ph
Submitted: 2026-07-02
Comments: 17 pages, 10 figures, published in PRD
Journal ref: Phys. Rev. D 113, 123064, 2026
DOI: 10.1103/bxj1-9g95
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: X-ray interband time lags are key diagnostics of jet physics and are frequently detected in high-frequency peaked BL Lac (HBL) objects at different epochs with various X-ray telescopes.
Terminology
Abstract
X-ray interband time lags are key diagnostics of jet physics and are frequently detected in high-frequency peaked BL Lac (HBL) objects at different epochs with various X-ray telescopes. In this work, we theoretically investigate Fourier lag-frequency spectra using a generic one-zone leptonic model incorporating the stochastic turbulent acceleration (STA), which plays a crucial role in shaping the emitted photon spectra. We demonstrate that the competition between STA, radiative cooling, and escape processes not only gives rise to two well-defined time-lag regimes: hard/positive and soft/negative lags, but also reveals the existence of a transition between the two regimes. Our results indicate that time lags in the transitional and soft-lag regimes can be clearly amplified and modified by STA's suppression of high-energy electron cooling, and nonlinear synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) cooling can further amplify the emergence of time lags. We conclude that the adopted model offers a unifying quantitative framework for interpreting the diverse time-lag signatures observed in the X-ray flares of HBLs. Additionally, SSC cooling effects can account for the relatively large lags observed in TeV-bright flares, as well as the observed trend between lag amplitude and flare duration: the larger the flare duration, the larger the lag.
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