X-ray intraday variability and power spectral density profiles of the blazar 3C 273 with XMM–Newton during 2000–2021

Pavana Gowtami, GS; Gaur, Haritma; Gupta, Alok C; Wiita, Paul J; Liao, Mai; Ward, Martin

Abstract

We present X-ray intraday variability and power spectral density (PSD) analyses of the longest 23 pointed XMM–Newton observations of the blazar 3C 273 that were taken during 2000–2021. These good time intervals contain between 5 and 24.6 h of data. Variability has been estimated in three energy bands: 0.2–2 keV (soft), 2–10 keV (hard), and 0.2–10 keV (total). 9 of the 23 observations exhibited some variability, though no major variations exceeding 5 per cent were detected. Typical time-scales for variability were ∼1 ks. For those variable light curves, we find that a power-law model provides good fits to each PSD, with most of the slopes between −1.7 and −2.8. Although no variations of hardness ratio (HR) could be measured in any individual observation, an anticorrelation in flux and HR is found in long term data that indicates a harder when brighter trend. Our flux and spectral analyses indicate that both particle acceleration and synchrotron cooling processes make an important contribution to the emission from this blazar.

Citation

Pavana Gowtami, G., Gaur, H., Gupta, A. C., Wiita, P. J., Liao, M., & Ward, M. (2022). X-ray intraday variability and power spectral density profiles of the blazar 3C 273 with XMM–Newton during 2000–2021. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 511(2), 3101-3112. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac286

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 27, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Feb 3, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022-04
• Deposit Date: May 26, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: May 26, 2022
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Print ISSN: 0035-8711
• Electronic ISSN: 1365-2966
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 511
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 3101-3112
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac286
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1204472
• Related Public URLs: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2109.13118