The Virgo Cluster radio galaxy M87 (NGC 4486), located at a distance of 





 Mpc (Mei et al. 2007) and believed to harbour a BH of mass 





, was the first extragalactic source detected at VHE energies (Aharonian et al. 2003). Given its proximity, M87 has been a prime target to probe scenarios for the formation of relativistic jets with high-resolution radio observations exploring scales down to some tens of rg, and much effort has recently been dedicated in this direction (e.g., Acciari et al. 2009; Doeleman et al. 2012; Hada et al. 2014, 2016; Akiyama et al. 2015, 2017; Kino et al. 2015). At VHE energies, M87 has revealed at least three active γ-ray episodes, during which day-scale flux variability (i.e., 





) has been observed (Aharonian et al. 2006; Albert et al. 2008; Acciari et al. 2009; Abramowski et al. 2012; Aliu et al. 2012). The VHE spectrum is compatible with a relatively hard power law (photon index ∼2.2) extending from 300 GeV to beyond 10 TeV, while the corresponding TeV output is relatively moderate, with an isotropic equivalent luminosity of 





 erg s−1. The inner, parsec-scale jet in M87 is considered to be misaligned by 





–25°, resulting in modest Doppler boosting of its jet emission and creating challenges for conventional jet models to account for the observed VHE characteristics (see, e.g., Rieger & Aharonian 2012 for review and references). Gap-type emission models offer a promising alternative and different realizations have been proposed in the literature (e.g., Neronov & Aharonian 2007; Levinson & Rieger 2011; Broderick & Tchekhovskoy 2015; Vincent 2015; Ptitsyna & Neronov 2016). M87 is overall highly underluminous with characteristic estimates for its total nuclear (disk and jet) bolometric luminosity not exceeding 





 erg s−1 by much (e.g., Owen et al. 2000; Whysong & Antonucci 2004; Prieto et al. 2016), suggesting that accretion onto its BH indeed occurs in a non-standard, advective-dominated (ADAF) mode characterized by an intrinsically low radiative efficiency (e.g., Di Matteo et al. 2003; Nemmen et al. 2014), with inferred accretion rates possibly ranging up to 





 (e.g., Levinson & Rieger 2011) and a BH spin parameter close to its maximum one (e.g., Feng & Wu 2017). For these values of the accretion rate, the soft photon field (see Equations (2) and (3)) is sufficiently sparse that the maximum Lorentz factor 





 of the magnetospheric particles is essentially determined by the curvature mechanism. The observed VHE variability is in principle compatible with 





, so that the different dependence of the gap power on β, Equation (20), does not necessarily (in the absence of other, intrinsic considerations of gap closure) imply a strong difference in the extractable gap powers. Figure 2 shows a representative point for M87 (taking 





). The observed VHE luminosity of M87 is some orders of magnitudes lower than the maximum possible gap power (given by the dotted line) and within the bound imposed by ADAF considerations (vertical line). The observed VHE flaring events thus appear consistent with a magnetospheric origin. VLBI observations of (delayed) radio core flux enhancements indeed provide support for the proposal that the variable VHE emission in M87 originates at the jet base very near to the BH (e.g., Acciari et al. 2009; Beilicke 2012; Hada et al. 2012, 2014).
Citation: Aliu et al. 2012
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