http://arxiv.org/abs/2107.05660
During a period of strong $\gamma$-ray flaring activity from BL Lacertae, we organized Swift, NICER, and NuSTAR follow-up observations. The source has been monitored by Swift-XRT between 2020 August 11 and October 16, showing a variability amplitude of 65, with a flux varying between 1.0 $\times$ 10$^{-11}$ and 65.3 $\times$ 10$^{-11}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$. On 2020 October 6, Swift-XRT has observed the source during its historical maximum X-ray flux. A softer-when-brighter behaviour has been observed by XRT, suggesting an increasing importance of the synchrotron emission in the X-ray part of the spectrum covered by XRT during bright states. Rapid variability in soft X-rays has been observed with both the Swift-XRT and NICER observations with a minimum variability time-scale of 60 s and 240 s, respectively, suggesting very compact emitting regions (2.4 $\times$ 10$^{13}$ cm and 9.5 $\times$ 10$^{13}$ cm). At hard X-rays, a minimum variability time-scale of $\sim$ 5.5 ks has been observed by NuSTAR. We report the first simultaneous NICER and NuSTAR observations of BL Lacertae during 2020 October 11-12. The joint NICER and NuSTAR spectra are well fitted by a broken power-law with a significant difference of the photon index below (2.10) and above (1.60) an energy break at $\sim$ 2.7 keV, indicating the presence of two different emission components (i.e, synchrotron and inverse Compton) in the broad band X-ray spectrum. Leaving the total hydrogen column density toward BL Lacertae free to vary, a value of N$_{H,tot}$ = (2.58 $\pm$ 0.09) $\times$ 10$^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$ has been estimated.
F. D’Ammando
Wed, 14 Jul 21
47/67
Comments: 13 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
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