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  • RAPID VARIABILITY OF BLAZAR...
    Hayashida, M.; Nalewajko, K.; Madejski, G. M.; Sikora, M.; Itoh, R.; Ajello, M.; Blandford, R. D.; Buson, S.; Chiang, J.; Fukazawa, Y.; Furniss, A. K.; Urry, C. M.; Hasan, I.; Harrison, F. A.; Alexander, D. M.; Balokovi, M.; Barret, D.; Boggs, S. E.; Christensen, F. E.; Craig, W. W.; Forster, K.; Giommi, P.; Grefenstette, B.; Hailey, C.; Hornstrup, A.; Kitaguchi, T.; Koglin, J. E.; Madsen, K. K.; Mao, P. H.; Miyasaka, H.; Mori, K.; Perri, M.; Pivovaroff, M. J.; Puccetti, S.; Rana, V.; Stern, D.; Tagliaferri, G.; Westergaard, N. J.; Zhang, W. W.; Zoglauer, A.; Gurwell, M. A.; Uemura, M.; Akitaya, H.; Kawabata, K. S.; Kawaguchi, K.; Kanda, Y.; Moritani, Y.; Takaki, K.; Ui, T.; Yoshida, M.; Agarwal, A.; Gupta, A. C.

    The Astrophysical journal, 07/2015, Volume: 807, Issue: 1
    Journal Article

    ABSTRACT We report the results of a multiband observing campaign on the famous blazar 3C 279 conducted during a phase of increased activity from 2013 December to 2014 April, including first observations of it with NuSTAR. The γ-ray emission of the source measured by Fermi-LAT showed multiple distinct flares reaching the highest flux level measured in this object since the beginning of the Fermi mission, with of 10−5 photons cm−2 s−1, and with a flux-doubling time scale as short as 2 hr. The γ-ray spectrum during one of the flares was very hard, with an index of , which is rarely seen in flat-spectrum radio quasars. The lack of concurrent optical variability implies a very high Compton dominance parameter . Two 1 day NuSTAR observations with accompanying Swift pointings were separated by 2 weeks, probing different levels of source activity. While the 0.5−70 keV X-ray spectrum obtained during the first pointing, and fitted jointly with Swift-XRT is well-described by a simple power law, the second joint observation showed an unusual spectral structure: the spectrum softens by at ∼4 keV. Modeling the broadband spectral energy distribution during this flare with the standard synchrotron plus inverse-Compton model requires: (1) the location of the γ-ray emitting region is comparable with the broad-line region radius, (2) a very hard electron energy distribution index , (3) total jet power significantly exceeding the accretion-disk luminosity , and (4) extremely low jet magnetization with . We also find that single-zone models that match the observed γ-ray and optical spectra cannot satisfactorily explain the production of X-ray emission.