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The swift observations of distant high-energy peaked BL Lacertae objects

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Abstract

In this paper, we present the timing and spectral results for the seven distant and poorly investigated BL Lacertae sources with redshifts \(z\gtrsim 0.5\), using the archival data obtained with the Swift and other multifrequency instruments during 2006 August–2015 July. Our timing study has revealed a number of the 0.3–10 keV flux changes from the fluctuations observed within one day to the variabilities on timescales of a few months. Namely, the relatively densely-sampled observations of BZB J1517+6525 showed a strong X-ray flare by a factor of ∼5 during 2014 September-December. While this instance can be explained by the propagation of shock wave though the blazar jet which causes a strong heat-up of the relativistic plasma, the lower-amplitude flux fluctuations observed in higher X-ray states could be related to the interaction between the shock front and jet inhomogeneities. The curved 0.3–10 keV spectra showed the ranges of the photon index at 1 keV \(a=1.27\)(0.10)–2.30(0.09), curvature parameter \(b = 0.12\)(0.08)–1.19(0.27), synchrotron SED peak position \(E_{p} = 0.49\)(0.09)–3.39(0.97) keV, while some spectra do not exhibit spectral curvature and fit well with a simple power law model yielding the 0.3–10 keV photon-index \(\Gamma =1.48\)(0.15)–2.32(0.08). Large spectral curvatures observed for the majority of the log-parabolic spectra hint at the importance of the second-order Fermi mechanism for our targets. Our targets show very high isotropic luminosity \(L_{0.3\text{--}10~\text{keV}}\sim 10^{46}~\mbox{erg}\,\mbox{s}^{-1}\) compared to the nearby bright BL Lacertae objects.

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Notes

  1. www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html.

  2. http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=J/AJ/145/31.

  3. http://www.asdc.asi.it/bzcat/.

  4. http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/archive.html.

  5. See heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xanadu/xspec/XspecManual.pdf for the XSPEC users’ guide.

  6. http://crts.caltech.edu/index.html.

  7. http://www.astro.caltech.edu/ovroblazars.

  8. For each source, the catalogue values of each spectral parameter are the same in 3FGL and in the newly-released 4FGL catalogue within the error range.

  9. See https://www.swift.psu.edu/toop/too.php.

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Acknowledgements

PR acknowledges the contract ASI-INAF I/004/11/0. We thank the helpful service of HEASARC, and the use of public data from the Swift and Fermi archives. This research has made use of the XRTDAS software, developed under the responsibility of the ASDC, Italy, and the data from the OVRO 40-m monitoring program (Richards, J. L. et al. 2011) which is supported in part by NASA grants NNX08AW31G, NNX11A043G, and NNX14AQ89G and NSF grants AST–0808050 and AST–1109911. This research has made use from Catalina Real-Time Survey (CRTS). We thank Alexandre Gurchumelia for the proof-reading and language corrections of the manuscript. Finally, we thank the anonymous referee for very useful suggestions that helped to improve the quality of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. E. Kharadze National Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory, Mt. Kanobili, Abastumani, 0803, Georgia

    S. Kapanadze & L. Neparidze

  2. Ilia State University, Cholokashvili Av. 3/5, Tbilisi, 0162, Georgia

    B. Kapanadze

  3. INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Via E. Bianchi 46, 23807, Merate, Italy

    S. Vercellone & P. Romano

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  1. S. Kapanadze
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Kapanadze, S., Kapanadze, B., Vercellone, S. et al. The swift observations of distant high-energy peaked BL Lacertae objects. Astrophys Space Sci 365, 66 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-020-03778-6

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