Inverse compton scattering in anisotropic synchrotron sources

Models of compact, high brightness temperature sources such as quasars and active galactic nuclei often predict substantial inverse-compton scattered flux to be produced at high frequencies. As these fluxes are not observed, it is necessary to assume that extreme relativistic and/or anisotropic effects dominate the source. The often used equations to include these effects however are derived with several simplifying assumptions, which may not always be consistent with the derived source parameters (for example, the assumption of no time dependence in a violently variable quasar may not be appropriate). We therefore present here an explicit derivation of the dependence of the rate of inverse compton scattering on anisotropies in the source, to emphasise the importance and number of assumptions required in the derivation.