Spectral Modeling of Flares in Long-term Gamma-Ray Light Curve of PKS 0903-57

A detailed study of the BL Lacertae PKS 0903-57 has been done for the first time with 12 yr of Fermi Large Area Telescope data. We have identified two bright gamma-ray flares in 2018 and 2020. Many substructures were observed during multiple time binning of these flares. We performed a detailed temporal and spectral study on all the substructures separately. A single-zone emission model is used for time-dependent leptonic modeling of the multiwavelength spectral energy distributions. Our estimated values of variability timescale, magnetic field in the emission region, and the jet power obtained from leptonic modeling of PKS 0903-57 are presented in this work. Currently, we have a minimal number of observations in X-rays and other bands. Hence, further simultaneous multiwavelength monitoring of this source is required to have a better understanding of the physical processes occurring in the jet of the blazar PKS 0903-57.

Optical Variability of a Newly Discovered Blazar Sample from the BZCAT Catalog

In an optical monitoring program to characterize the variability properties of blazars, we observed 10 sources from the Roma-BZCAT catalog for 26 nights in V and R bands during 2014 October to 2015 June with two telescopes located in India. The sample includes mainly newly discovered BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs) for which the redshift of some sources is not yet known. We present the results of flux and color variations of the sample on intraday and short timescales obtained by using the power-enhanced F-test and the nested-ANOVA tests, along with their spectral behavior. We find significant intraday variability in the single flat-spectrum radio quasar in our sample, having an amplitude of variation ∼12%. Although a few of the BL Lacs showed probable variation in some nights, none of them passed the variability tests at 99.9% significance level. We find that 78% of the sample showed significant negative color–magnitude correlations, i.e., a redder-when-brighter spectral evolution. Those that do not show strong or clear chromatism predominantly exhibit a redder-when-brighter trend. Unlike on hourly timescales, the high-synchrotron-peaked blazars in the sample (BZGJ0656+4237, BZGJ0152+0147, and BZBJ1728+5013) show strong flux variation on timescales of days to months, where again we detect a decreasing trend of the spectral slope with brightness. We observe a global steepening of the optical spectrum with increasing flux on the intranight timescale for the entire blazar sample. The nonvariability in the BL Lacs in our sample might be caused by the distinct contribution from the disk as well as from other components in the studied energy range.

Intra-day variability of BL Lacertae from 2016 to 2018

We monitored BL Lacertae in the B, V, R and I bands for 14 nights during the period of 2016–2018. The source showed significant intra-day variability on 12 nights. We performed color-magnitude analysis and found that the source exhibited bluer-when-brighter chromatism. This bluer-when-brighter behavior is at least partly caused by the larger variation amplitude at shorter wavelengths. The variations at different wavelengths are correlated well and show no inter-band time lag.

Broadband study of BL Lac during flare of 2020: Spectral evolution and emergence of HBL component

BL Lacertae (BL Lac) is categorized as TeV blazar and considered as a possible source of astrophysical neutrinos. In 2020, the brightest X-ray flare ever detected from it. A detailed study can answer many puzzling questions related to multiband emissions and fast-flux variability often seen in this kind of source. We have performed the temporal and spectral analysis of the brightest flare. The variability is characterized by the fractional variability amplitude and the variability time. We found that the source has crossed all its previous limits of flux and reached to a maximum ever seen from it in optical and X-rays. It is highly variable in X-rays with fractional variability above 100 per cent (1.8397±0.0181) and the fastest variability time of 11.28 hours within a day. The broadband light curves correlation with X-ray suggest a time lag of one day. A broadband SED modeling is pursued to understand the possible physical mechanisms responsible for broadband emission. Modeling requires two emission regions located at two different sites to explain the low and high flux states. A significant spectral change is observed in the optical-UV and X-ray spectrum during the high state, which eventually leads to shifts in the location of the synchrotron peak towards higher energy, suggesting an emergence of a new HBL component.

A BL Lacertae object at a cosmic age of 800 Myr

BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs) and flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs), known as blazars, are low- and high-luminosity radio-loud Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) with relativistic jets pointed towards Earth (1). Evolving from FSRQs (2,3), BL Lac objects host ~109 Msun supermassive black holes (SMBHs, where Msun is the mass of the Sun) and reside preferentially in giant elliptical galaxies of stellar masses 1011-1012Msun (4-7). The known BL Lacs are relatively nearby objects found below redshift 3.6 (3,8,9). Here, we report the discovery of a BL Lac object, FIRST J233153.20+112952.11 (hereafter J2331+11), at a redshift of 6.57 corresponding to an age of the Universe of ~800 Myr. As the typical BL Lac, J2331+11 is a compact radio source with the flat power-law radio continuum, no emission lines in its near-infrared spectrum, and significant variability. The optical-to-radio continuum of J2331+11 is entirely dominated by the synchrotron emission of a relativistic jet. J2331+11 provides evidence for the shorter formation timescale of massive SMBHs with jets and bulge-dominated galaxies than that expected from the Eddington-limited growth of SMBHs and hierarchical galaxy formation. The rapid formation of BL Lacs at early cosmic epochs should have taken place in the densest regions of the early Universe.

X-RAY FLUX AND SPECTRAL VARIABILITY OF BL LACERTAE OBJECTS MRK 421, MRK 501, AND 1ES1426+428 WITH SUZAKU SATELLITE

We present a detailed spectral study of Suzaku observations of three blazars (Mrk 421, Mrk 501, and 1ES1426+428). The X-ray properties of our sample are derived by extracting the BL Lacertae sample spectra, and fitted by five models. The fit was in the soft X-ray band (0.8 - 10.0 keV). These models give similar results. By comparing the fits from the different models, we find that the (zbremss+zpowerlw) model is the best one to represent the data. An F-test is applied to compare the (zbremss+zpowerlw) model with the simple one zpower law. To test the X-ray variability of our BL Lacertae sample, we fit their spectra extracted from the same instrument with the same procedure by the same model to estimate their X-ray flux and luminosity. The estimated fluxes are compared to check their variability. We find that the flux variability ranges are 3.06, 0.12, 0.37 × 10−10 erg s−1 cm−2 for Mrk 421, Mrk 501, and 1ES1426+428, respectively.