English

Multi-wavelength Temporal Variability of the Blazar 3C 454.3 during 2014 Activity Phase

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2017-01-04 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We present a multi-wavelength temporal analysis of the blazar 3C 454.3 during the high γ\gamma-ray active period from May-December, 2014. Except for X-rays, the period is well sampled at near-infrared (NIR)-optical by the \emph{SMARTS} facility and the source is detected continuously on daily timescale in the \emph{Fermi}-LAT γ\gamma-ray band. The source exhibits diverse levels of variability with many flaring/active states in the continuously sampled γ\gamma-ray light curve which are also reflected in the NIR-optical light curves and the sparsely sampled X-ray light curve by the \emph{Swift}-XRT. Multi-band correlation analysis of this continuous segment during different activity periods shows a change of state from no lags between IR and γ\gamma-ray, optical and γ\gamma-ray, and IR and optical to a state where γ\gamma-ray lags the IR/optical by \sim3 days. The results are consistent with the previous studies of the same during various γ\gamma-ray flaring and active episodes of the source. This consistency, in turn, suggests an extended localized emission region with almost similar conditions during various γ\gamma-ray activity states. On the other hand, the delay of γ\gamma-ray with respect to IR/optical and a trend similar to IR/optical in X-rays along with strong broadband correlations favor magnetic field related origin with X-ray and γ\gamma-ray being inverse Comptonized of IR/optical photons and external radiation field, respectively.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1609.06952,
  title  = {Multi-wavelength Temporal Variability of the Blazar 3C 454.3 during 2014 Activity Phase},
  author = {Pankaj Kushwaha and Alok C. Gupta and Ranjeev Misra and K. P. Singh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.06952},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

15 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, MNRAS accepted