A Shock-in-Jet Synchrotron Mirror Model for Blazars
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript describes a self-consistent shock model for blazar jets. the model has been tested in modeling spectral variability of few blazars and texty describes the applicability of the model to recently observed gamma-ray flare in 3C279. I think this work deserved a publication and will interest researchers working on AGN jets.
Author Response
I thank the reviewer for the positive assessment. The paper has been carefully proofread and typos have been corrected.
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper investigates the effect of "synchrotron mirror" on observed gamma-ray emission and considers this model as a possible explanation of orphan gamma-ray flares. Despite the negative verdict that addition of the synchrotron mirror in a single-zone model by itself is not able to explain observing data, the paper is valuable for the field.
The paper is well written and clearly explans the problem, the model modification for its solution, and comparison of the results with observations.
I recommend this work for publication in MDPI/Physics.
Minor comment:
Fig.2 is somewhat hard to read. It would be better to make lines thinker or use various line types.
Author Response
I thank the reviewer for the positive assessment. Figure 2 has been improved as suggested.
Reviewer 3 Report
Based on time-dependent shock-in-jet model developed by the author’s previous work, this paper tries to introduce a “mirror” effect to explain the orphan flare often observed in blazar light curve. I found the paper interesting and being suitable for publication in special issue in honor of the 70th birthday of Prof. Reinhard Schlickeiser, who has made many contributions in bazar's research field. I have some comments,
The phenomenon “orphan” flare was first proposed as a high-energy burst without a low-frequency counterpart, which bring almost all relevant theoretical works focusing on building an inverse Compton burst, but synchrotron emission does not burst. Similar to this paper, these models also meet the difficulty to explain high-amplitude orphan flare or fine-turned problems. Observationally, more and more variabilities show that the orphan flare can happen at both high and low frequencies, unlike previous thought. It is necessary to break through previous framework to understand “orphan” flare as just a phenomenon occurs at one frequency and does not occur at another frequency.
Author Response
I thank the reviewer for the positive assessment.
Reviewer 4 Report
The author presents a new numerical synchrotron mirror model for relativistic shocks in blazar jets, and applies this model to observations of a specific "orphan" gamma-ray flare in 3C279. The - very focused - paper is well written and should be published soon. I suggest two relatively minor improvements that should be made before publication:
1. The author finds that his model does not reproduce the gamma-ray flare to which it is applied, concluding a bit more generally that "a pure shock-in-jet synchrotron mirror scenario" is not able to reproduce the December 2013 gamma-ray flare in 3C279. This should be put into context: have there been other approaches that have been more successful? Or does the author's approach, even if ultimately unsuccessful, show the best agreement to the data as yet?
2. As is typical for this line of work, the author's model comes with a large number of parameters, with some being free and others being constrained. It would be helpful for the reader to tabulate all parameters and their values, ranges of values, or best-fit values.
Author Response
I thank the reviewer for the positive assessment. In response to point 1, I have added a few sentences discussing alternative attempts at modeling the December 2013 orphan gamma-ray flare of 3C279 in Section 4. In response to point 2, I have added a table with the model parameters in Section 3.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
This version can be accepted.
Reviewer 4 Report
The second version of the paper incorporated my suggestions and should be published soon.
