TY  - JOUR
A1  - Shukla, A.
A1  - Mannheim, K.
T1  - Gamma-ray flares from relativistic magnetic reconnection in the jet of the quasar 3C 279
JF  - Nature Communications
N2  - Spinning black holes in the centres of galaxies can release powerful magnetised jets. When the jets are observed at angles of less than a few degrees to the line-of-sight, they are called blazars, showing variable non-thermal emission across the electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to gamma rays. It is commonly believed that shock waves are responsible for this dissipation of jet energy. Here we show that gamma-ray observations of the blazar 3C 279 with the space-borne telescope Fermi-LAT reveal a characteristic peak-in-peak variability pattern on time scales of minutes expected if the particle acceleration is instead due to relativistic magnetic reconnection. The absence of gamma-ray pair attenuation shows that particle acceleration takes place at a distance of ten thousand gravitational radii from the black hole where the fluid dynamical kink instability drives plasma turbulence.
KW  - kink instability
KW  - energy
KW  - radiation
KW  - blazars
KW  - variability
KW  - absorption
KW  - telescope
KW  - shocks
Y1  - 2020
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-231328
VL  - 11
ER  -