A hadronic synchrotron mirror model for the "orphan" TeV flare in 1ES 1959+650

Very-high-energy gamma-ray flares of TeV blazars are generally accompanied by simultaneous flaring activity in X-rays. The recent observations by the Whipple collaboration of an ``orphan'' TeV flare of 1ES 1959+650 (without simultaneous X-ray flare) is very hard to reconcile with the standard leptonic SSC model which is routinely very successfully employed to explain the SED and spectral variability of TeV blazars. In this paper, an alternative scenario is suggested in which the ``orphan'' TeV flare may originate from relativistic protons, interacting with an external photon field supplied by electron-synchrotron radiation reflected off a dilute reflector. While the external photons will be virtually ``invisible'' to the co-moving ultrarelativistic electrons in the jet due to Klein-Nishina effects, their Doppler boosted energy is high enough to excite the $\Delta$ resonance from relativistic protons with Lorentz factors of ~ 10^3 - 10^4. This model is capable of explaining the ``orphan'' TeV flare of 1ES 1959+650 with plausible parameters, thus constraining the number and characteristic energy of relativistic protons in the jet of this blazar.