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Title: First NuSTAR observations of the BL Lac - type blazar PKS 2155-304: constraints on the jet content and distribution of radiating particles

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
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  1. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
  2. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., CA (United States); Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), Warsaw (Poland)
  3. California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  4. Max Planck Inst. fuer Physik, Munich (Germany)
  5. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., CA (United States); California State Univ., East Bay, Hayward, CA (United States)
  6. Univ. of Tokyo (Japan)
  7. Yale Univ., New Haven, CT (United States)
  8. Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), Warsaw (Poland)
  9. Clemson Univ., SC (United States)
  10. Univ. de Savoie, Annecy-le-Vieux (France)
  11. Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau (France)
  12. California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Jet Propulsion Lab. (JPL)
  13. Durham Univ. (United Kingdom)
  14. Univ. of Toulouse (France); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Toulouse (France)
  15. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  16. Technical Univ. of Denmark, Lyngby (Denmark)
  17. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  18. ASI Science Data Center, Rome (Italy)
  19. Inst. of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), Wako (Japan)
  20. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
  21. ASI Science Data Center, Rome (Italy); Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Monteporzio (Italy)
  22. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  23. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Here we report the first hard X-ray observations with NuSTAR of the BL Lac-type blazar PKS 2155-304, augmented with soft X-ray data from XMM-Newton and γ-ray data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope, obtained in 2013 April when the source was in a very low flux state. A joint NuSTAR and XMM spectrum, covering the energy range 0.5–60 keV, is best described by a model consisting of a log-parabola component with curvature $$\beta ={0.3}_{-0.1}^{+0.2}$$ and a (local) photon index 3.04 ± 0.15 at photon energy of 2 keV, and a hard power-law tail with photon index 2.2 ± 0.4. The hard X-ray tail can be smoothly joined to the quasi-simultaneous γ-ray spectrum by a synchrotron self-Compton component produced by an electron distribution with index p = 2.2. Assuming that the power-law electron distribution extends down to γmin = 1 and that there is one proton per electron, an unrealistically high total jet power of Lp ~ 1047 erg s–1 is inferred. This can be reduced by two orders of magnitude either by considering a significant presence of electron–positron pairs with lepton-to-proton ratio $${n}_{{\rm{e}}+{\rm{e}}-}/{n}_{{\rm{p}}}\sim 30$$, or by introducing an additional, low-energy break in the electron energy distribution at the electron Lorentz factor γbr1 ~ 100. In either case, the jet composition is expected to be strongly matter-dominated.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); Polish National Science Centre (NCN)
Contributing Organization:
Fermi-LAT Collaboration
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-07NA27344; NNG08FD60C; 2015/18/E/ST9/00580; NNX14AQ07H
OSTI ID:
1876966
Report Number(s):
LLNL-JRNL-837152; 1056887; TRN: US2307352
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 831, Issue 2; ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 25 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (10)

Leptonic and Hadronic Modeling of Fermi -LAT Hard Spectrum Quasars and Predictions for High-energy Polarization journal August 2018
X-Ray Flux and Spectral Variability of Six TeV Blazars with NuSTAR journal May 2018
Blazar Spectra with Hard-sphere-like Acceleration of Electrons journal June 2018
General Physical Properties of CGRaBS Blazars text January 2017
Breaking degeneracy in jet dynamics: multi-epoch joint modelling of the BL Lac PKS 2155-304 text January 2018
A Two-zone Model for Blazar Emission: Implications for TXS 0506+056 and the Neutrino Event IceCube-170922A journal November 2019
General Physical Properties of Gamma-ray Emitting Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies text January 2019
Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Electron-Positron-Proton Plasmas: Implications for Jets of Active Galactic Nuclei text January 2019
Hard X-ray properties of NuSTAR blazars journal November 2018
Radiative signatures of plasmoid-dominated reconnection in blazar jets journal October 2018

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
BL lacertae objects
individual (PKS 2155-304)
galaxies: active
galaxies: jets
gamma rays
galaxies
radiation mechanisms
non-thermal