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

doi:10.1093/mnras/stac286

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

Authors

GS Pavana Gowtami

Haritma Gaur

Alok C Gupta

Paul J Wiita

Mai Liao

Professor Martin Ward martin.ward@durham.ac.uk
External Examiner (PGR)

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
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

Files

Published Journal Article (1.5 Mb)
PDF

Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2022 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.