ON THE GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM 3C-279

Intense gamma-ray emission was recently discovered from the direction of the quasar 3C 279 by the Compton GRO. It is proposed here that gamma-rays are produced in the inelastic collisions of a mildly relativistic proton beam with matter of a thick accretion disk via decay of neutral pions and as a result of Comptonization of UV thermal photons by secondary electrons from decay of charged pions. The cone proton beam propagates along the axis of the disk funnel and illuminates its walls. From the fit of the observed data by calculated photon spectra we estimte a minimum power of 3C 279 in relativistic protons of L(p) is-approximately-equal-to 2.5 x 10(47) ergs s-1.