No Arabic abstract
The Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) hard X-ray transient monitor tracks more than 700 galactic and extragalactic sources on time scales ranging from a single Swift pointing (approximately 20 minutes) to one day. The monitored sources include all objects from the Fermi LAT bright source list which are either identified or which have a 95% error confidence radius of less than eight arc minutes. We report on the detection statistics of these sources in the BAT monitor both before and after the launch of Fermi.
We report the results of a cross-match study between the hard X-ray and GeV gamma-ray catalogs, by making use of the latest 105-month Swift-BAT and 10-yr Fermi-LAT catalogs, respectively. The spatial cross-matching between the two catalogs results in the matching of 132 point-like sources, including ~5% of false-match sources. Additionally, 24 sources that have been identified as the same identifications are matched. Among the 75 extended sources in the Fermi-LAT catalog, 31 sources have spatial coincidences with at least one Swift-BAT source inside their extent. All the matched sources consist of blazars (>60%), pulsars and pulsar wind nebulae (~13%), radio galaxies (~7%), binaries (~5%), and others. Compared to the original catalogs, the matched sources are characterized by a double-peaked photon index distribution, higher flux, and larger gamma-ray variability index. This difference arises from the different populations of sources, particularly the large proportion of blazars (i.e., FSRQ and BL Lac). We also report 13 cross-matched and unidentified sources. The matched sources in this study would be promising in the intermediate energy band between the hard X-ray and GeV gamma-ray observations, that is the unexplored MeV gamma-ray domain.
We describe a long-term Swift monitoring program of Fermi gamma-ray sources, particularly the 23 gamma-ray sources of interest. We present a systematic analysis of the Swift X-ray Telescope light curves and hardness ratios of these sources, and we calculate excess variability. We present data for the time interval of 2004 December 22 through 2012 August 31. We describe the analysis methods used to produce these data products, and we discuss the availability of these data in an online repository, which continues to grow from more data on these sources and from a growing list of additional sources. This database should be of use to the broad astronomical community for long term studies of the variability of these objects and for inclusion in multi-wavelength studies.
We report the results from our analysis of a large set of archival data acquired with the X-ray telescope (XRT) onboard Swift, covering the sky region surrounding objects from the first Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) catalogue of high-energy sources (1FHL), which still lack an association. Of the 23 regions analysed, ten did not show any evidence of X-ray emission, but 13 were characterised by the presence of one or more objects emitting in the 0.3-10 keV band. Only in a couple of cases is the X-ray counterpart located outside the Fermi positional uncertainty, while in all other cases the associations found are compatible with the high-energy error ellipses. All counterparts we found have been studied in detail by means of a multi-waveband approach to evaluate their nature or class; in most cases, we have been able to propose a likely or possible association except for one Fermi source whose nature remains doubtful at the moment. The majority of the likely associations are extragalactic in nature, most probably blazars of the BL Lac type.
The Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT) 3FHL catalog is the latest catalog of >10 GeV sources and will remain an important resource for the high-energy community for the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is crucial that this catalog is made complete by providing associations for most sources. In this paper, we present the results of the X-ray analysis of 38 3FHL sources. We found a single bright X-ray source in 20 fields, two sources each in two fields and none for the remaining 16. The analysis of the properties of the 22 3FHL fields with X-ray sources led us to believe that most (19/22) are of extra-galactic origin. A machine-learning algorithm was used to determine the source type and we find that 15 potential blazars are likely BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs). This is consistent with the fact that BL Lacs are by far the most numerous population detected above >10 GeV in the 3FHL.
We report on multiwavelength observations of the blazar PKS 0537-441 (z = 0.896) obtained from microwaves through gamma rays by SMA, REM, ATOM, Swift and Fermi during 2008 August-2010 April. Strong variability has been observed in gamma rays, with two major flaring episodes (2009 July and 2010 March) and a harder-when-brighter behaviour, quite common for FSRQs and low-synchrotron-peaked BL Lacs, in 2010 March. In the same way the SED of the source cannot be modelled by a simple synchrotron self-Compton model, as opposed to many BL Lacs, but the addition of an external Compton component of seed photons from a dust torus is needed. The 230 GHz light curve showed an increase simultaneous with the gamma-ray one, indicating co-spatiality of the mm and gamma-ray emission region likely at large distance from the central engine. The low, average, and high activity SED of the source could be fit changing only the electron distribution parameters, but two breaks in the electron distribution are necessary. The ensuing extra spectral break, located at NIR-optical frequencies, together with that in gamma rays seem to indicate a common origin, most likely due to an intrinsic feature in the underlying electron distribution. An overall correlation between the gamma-ray band with the R-band and K-band has been observed with no significant time lag. On the other hand, when inspecting the light curves on short time scales some differences are evident. In particular, flaring activity has been detected in NIR and optical bands with no evident gamma-ray counterparts in 2009 September and November. Moderate variability has been observed in X-rays with no correlation between flux and photon index. An increase of the detected X-ray flux with no counter part at the other wavelengths has been observed in 2008 October, suggesting once more a complex correlation between the emission at different energy bands.