Swift obs. of Mrk 421. IV. 5.5yrs obs. Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Kapanadze B.
  2. Gurchumelia A.
  3. Aller M.
  4. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

We present the spectral and timing results obtained during the intense observations of Mrk 421 by the Swift-based ultraviolet to X-ray instruments during 2018 April-2023 December. The source showed various strengths of X-ray flaring activity, exceeding a level of 3.5x10^-9^erg/cm^2^/s during the strongest 0.3-10keV flares. Our study identifies a number of intraday brightness variability, including 61 instances that occurred within 1ks exposures that are consistent with the shock-in-jet scenario and accompanied by significant, fast spectral changes. The source exhibited extreme spectral properties with dominance of the log-parabolic distributions of photons with energy and the frequent occurrence of hard photon indices in the 0.3-10keV and 0.3-300GeV bands, with the peak of synchrotron spectral energy distribution Ep detected at the energies beyond 29keV for the first time. The source showed very fast transitions of log-parabolic-to-power-law spectra, most plausibly caused by turbulence-driven relativistic magnetic reconnection. Our spectral results also demonstrate the importance of the first-order Fermi mechanism within the magnetic field of different confinement efficiencies, stochastic acceleration, transitions in the turbulence spectrum, and hadronic cascades. The X-ray, UV, and {gamma}-ray fluxes showed a lognormal variability, which hints at the imprint of accretion disk instabilities on the blazar jet, as well as the possible presence of hadronic cascades. The UV and {gamma}-ray variabilities demonstrated weak correlations with the X-ray flaring activity, which is not consistent with simple synchrotron self-Compton models and requires more complex particle acceleration and emission scenarios.

Keywords
  1. bl-lacertae-objects
  2. x-ray-sources
  3. ultraviolet-photometry
  4. visible-astronomy
  5. gamma-ray-astronomy
  6. radio-sources
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2024ApJS..275...23K
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https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJS/275/23
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ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/275/23

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History

2025-11-03T14:51:22Z
Resource record created
2025-11-03T14:51:22Z
Created
2025-11-03T14:52:33Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr