A hydrodynamical model for the Fermi-LAT γ-ray light curve of blazar PKS 1510-089

Abstract

A physical description of the formation and propagation of working surfaces inside the relativistic jet of the blazar PKS 1510-089 are used to model its γ -ray variability light curve using Fermi-LAT data from 2008 to 2012. The physical model is based on conservation laws of mass and momentum at the working surface as explained by Mendoza et al. (2009). The hydrodynamical description of a working surface is parametrized by the initial velocity and mass injection rate at the base of the jet. We show that periodic variations on the injected velocity profiles are able to account for the observed luminosity, fixing model parameters such as mass ejection rates of the central engine injected at the base of the jet, oscillation frequencies of the flow and maximum Lorentz factors of the bulk flow during a particular burst.