English

X-ray spectral variations of synchrotron peak in BL Lacs

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2019-11-06 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

The spectral energy distribution of blazars around the synchrotron peak can be well described by the log-parabolic model that has three parameters: peak energy (EpE_\textrm{p}), peak luminosity (LpL_\textrm{p}) and the curvature parameter (bb). It has been suggested that EpE_\textrm{p} shows relations with LpL_\textrm{p} and bb in several sources, which can be used to constrain the physical properties of the emitting region and/or acceleration processes of the emitting particles. We systematically study the EpE_\textrm{p}-LpL_\textrm{p} and EpE_\textrm{p}-(1/b/b) relations for 14 BL Lac objects using the 3-25~keV RXTERXTE/PCA and 0.3-10~keV SwiftSwift/XRT data. Most objects (9/14) exhibit positive EpE_\textrm{p}-LpL_\textrm{p} correlations, three sources show no correlation, and two sources display negative correlations. In addition, most targets (7/14) present no correlation between EpE_\textrm{p} and 1/b/b, five sources pose negative correlations, and two sources demonstrate positive correlations. 1ES~1959+650 displays two different EpE_\textrm{p}-LpL_\textrm{p} relations in 2002 and 2016. We also analyze EpE_\textrm{p}-LpL_\textrm{p} and EpE_\textrm{p}-(1/b/b) relations during flares lasting for several days. The EpE_\textrm{p}-LpL_\textrm{p} relation does not exhibit significant differences between flares, while the EpE_\textrm{p}-(1/b/b) relation varies from flare to flare. For the total sample, when LpL_\textrm{p} < 1045 erg s-1\textrm{10}^\textrm{45}\ \textrm{erg}\ \textrm{s}^\textrm{-1}, there seems to be a positive EpE_\textrm{p}-LpL_\textrm{p} correlation. LpL_\textrm{p} and the slope of EpE_\textrm{p}-LpL_\textrm{p} relation present an anti-correlation, which indicates that the causes of spectral variations might be different between luminous and faint sources. EpE_\textrm{p} shows a positive correlation with the black hole mass. We discuss the implications of these results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.06801,
  title  = {X-ray spectral variations of synchrotron peak in BL Lacs},
  author = {Yijun Wang and Shifu Zhu and Yongquan Xue and Minfeng Gu and Shanshan Weng and Huynh Anh N. Le},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.06801},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

19 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables; Accepted for publication in ApJ