Unraveling the particle dynamics in Active Galactic Nuclei via multi wavelength photometry and polarimetry of bright blazars
Axel Arbet-Engels (MPP, Munich)
Tuesday 18/03/2025 @ 14:00, Sala Antonio Sollima (IV piano Battiferro)
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are among the most powerful persistent particle accelerators in our universe. Despite decades of investigations, the underlying acceleration and radiation processes in AGN jets are far from being understood. Because they are prime candidate sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and high-energy neutrinos, their understanding is key in the current era of multi-messenger astronomy. The advent of new instrumentation for photon and neutrino astronomy brings new scientific capabilities to probe the underlying physics of these cosmic accelerators. Among all AGNs, the best candidates to probe the temporal evolution of the particle distribution are blazars that are nearby and bright throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. I will present recent results of multiwavelength study of nearby AGNs from radio up to the TeV band (with MAGIC). For the first time, we combined the TeV observations with simultaneous X-ray polarisation measurements from the IXPE satellite. I will discuss how such results provide powerful insights on the acceleration process, even if a high degree of complexity is revealed. The next step is to validate theoretical models (and the related dynamics) with dedicated simulations for particle acceleration and temporal evolution.