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NuSTAR Perspective on High-redshift MeV Blazars

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [3];  [4];  [1];  [1];  [5];  [6];  [7]
  1. Clemson Univ., SC (United States)
  2. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Zeuthen (Germany)
  3. Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States)
  4. Clemson Univ., SC (United States); Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Bologna (Italy)
  5. National Inst. of Nuclear Physics (INFN), Rome (Italy); Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, Rome (Italy)
  6. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States); Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Baltimore, MD (United States)
  7. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

With bolometric luminosities exceeding 1048 erg s-1, powerful jets, and supermassive black holes at their center, MeV blazars are some of the most extreme sources in the universe. Recently, the Fermi-Large Area Telescope detected five new γ-ray emitting MeV blazars beyond redshift z = 3.1. With the goal of precisely characterizing the jet properties of these extreme sources, we started a multiwavelength campaign to follow them up with joint Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, Swift, and the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy’s optical telescopes. We observe six high-redshift quasars, four of them belonging to the new γ-ray emitting MeV blazars. Thorough X-ray analysis reveals spectral flattening at soft X-ray for three of these objects. The source NVSS J151002+570243 also shows a peculiar rehardening of the X-ray spectrum at energies E > 6 keV. Adopting a one-zone leptonic emission model, this combination of hard X-rays and γ-rays enables us to determine the location of the Inverse Compton peak and to accurately constrain the jet characteristics. In the context of the jet-accretion disk connection, we find that all six sources have jet powers exceeding accretion disk luminosity, seemingly validating this positive correlation even beyond z > 3. Our six sources are found to have 109 M⊙ black holes, further raising the space density of supermassive black holes in the redshift bin z = [3, 4].

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1638259
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 23080023
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Journal Name: The Astrophysical Journal (Online) Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 889; ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Canonical high power blazars text January 2009
Constraining Emission Models of Luminous Blazar Sources text January 2009
The Evolution of Swift/BAT blazars and the origin of the MeV background text January 2009
Chasing the heaviest black holes of jetted Active Galactic Nuclei text January 2009
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X-ray variability patterns in blazars text January 2010
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NuSTAR detection of the blazar B2 1023+25 at redshift 5.3 text January 2013
Black-hole mass estimates for a homogeneous sample of bright flat-spectrum radio quasars text January 2013
Evidence for Large Temperature Fluctuations in Quasar Accretion Disks From Spectral Variability text January 2014
The power of relativistic jets is larger than the luminosity of their accretion disks text January 2014
Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters text January 2015
Swift for blazars preprint January 2015
Extremes of the jet-accretion power relation of blazars, as explored by NuSTAR text January 2015
Optical flux behaviour of a sample of Fermi blazars text January 2016
General Physical Properties of CGRaBS Blazars text January 2017
The 105 month Swift-BAT all-sky hard X-ray survey text January 2018
On the origin of gamma rays in Fermi blazars: beyond the broad line region text January 2018
X-ray absorption towards high-redshift sources: probing the intergalactic medium with blazars text January 2018
Multi-frequency variability study of Ton 599 during high activity of 2017 text January 2018
Intra-Night Optical Variability Monitoring of Fermi Blazars: First Results from 1.3 m J C Bhattacharya Telescope text January 2018
A NuSTAR view of powerful gamma-ray loud blazars text January 2019
Gamma-loud quasars: a view with BeppoSAX text January 2000
Internal shocks in the jets of radio-loud quasars text January 2001
Log-parabolic spectra and particle acceleration in blazars - II: The BeppoSAX wide band X-ray spectra of Mkn 501 text January 2004
The Leiden/Argentine/Bonn (LAB) Survey of Galactic HI: Final data release of the combined LDS and IAR surveys with improved stray-radiation corrections text January 2005
The Swift X-ray Telescope text January 2005
Determining Central Black Hole Masses in Distant Active Galaxies and Quasars. II. Improved Optical and UV Scaling Relationships text January 2006
Spitzer Observations of 3C Quasars and Radio Galaxies: Mid-Infrared Properties of Powerful Radio Sources text January 2006

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79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS