No Arabic abstract
Context. 3C 279, the first quasar discovered to emit VHE gamma-rays by the MAGIC telescope in 2006, was reobserved by MAGIC in January 2007 during a major optical flare and from December 2008 to April 2009 following an alert from the Fermi space telescope on an exceptionally high gamma -ray state. Aims. The January 2007 observations resulted in a detection on January 16 with significance 5.2 sigma, corresponding to a F(> 150 GeV) (3.8 pm 0.8) cdot 10^-11 ph cm^-2 s^-1 while the overall data sample does not show significant signal. The December 2008 - April 2009 observations did not detect the source. We study the multiwavelength behavior of the source at the epochs of MAGIC observations, collecting quasi-simultaneous data at optical and X-ray frequencies and for 2009 also gamma-ray data from Fermi. Methods. We study the light curves and spectral energy distribution of the source. The spectral energy distributions of three observing epochs (including the February 2006, which has been previously published in Albert et al. 2008a) are modeled with one-zone inverse Compton models and the emission on January 16, 2007 also with two zone model and with a lepto-hadronic model. Results. We find that the VHE gamma-ray emission detected in 2006 and 2007 challenges standard one-zone model, based on relativistic electrons in a jet scattering broad line region photons, while the other studied models fit the observed spectral energy distribution more satisfactorily.
The flat-spectrum radio-quasar 3C279 (z=0.536) is the most distant object detected at very high energy (VHE) gamma-rays. It is thus an important beacon for the study of the interaction of the VHE gamma-rays with the Extra-galactic Background Light (EBL). Previous observations by EGRET showed a highly variable flux that can differ up to a factor of 100. In this paper results from an observation campaign with the MAGIC telescope during an optical flare in January 2007 will be presented and previous MAGIC results from 2006 will be summarized.
We report on the second AGILE multiwavelength campaign of the blazar 3C 454.3 during the first half of December 2007. This campaign involved AGILE, Spitzer, Swift,Suzaku,the WEBT consortium,the REM and MITSuME telescopes,offering a broad band coverage that allowed for a simultaneous sampling of the synchrotron and inverse Compton (IC) emissions.The 2-week AGILE monitoring was accompanied by radio to optical monitoring by WEBT and REM and by sparse observations in mid-Infrared and soft/hard X-ray energy bands performed by means of Target of Opportunity observations by Spitzer, Swift and Suzaku, respectively.The source was detected with an average flux of~250x10^{-8}ph cm^-2s^-1 above 100 MeV,typical of its flaring states.The simultaneous optical and gamma-ray monitoring allowed us to study the time-lag associated with the variability in the two energy bands, resulting in a possible ~1-day delay of the gamma-ray emission with respect to the optical one. From the simultaneous optical and gamma-ray fast flare detected on December 12, we can constrain the delay between the gamma-ray and optical emissions within 12 hours. Moreover, we obtain three Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) with simultaneous data for 2007 December 5, 13, 15, characterized by the widest multifrequency coverage. We found that a model with an external Compton on seed photons by a standard disk and reprocessed by the Broad Line Regions does not describe in a satisfactory way the SEDs of 2007 December 5, 13 and 15. An additional contribution, possibly from the hot corona with T=10^6 K surrounding the jet, is required to account simultaneously for the softness of the synchrotron and the hardness of the inverse Compton emissions during those epochs.
We present the results of a long M87 monitoring campaign in very high energy $gamma$-rays with the MAGIC-I Cherenkov telescope. A total of 150 hours of data was gathered between 2005 and 2007. No flaring activity was found during that time. Nevertheless, we have found an apparently steady and weak signal at the level of $7sigma$. We present the spectrum between 100 GeV and 2 TeV, which is consistent with a simple power law with a spectral index $-2.21pm0.21$ and a flux normalization (at 300 GeV) of $5.4pm1.1 times 10^{-8} frac{1}{mathrm{TeV s m}^{2}}$. It complements well with the previously published Fermi spectrum, covering an energy range of four orders of magnitude without apparent change in the spectral index.
We study the multifrequency emission and spectral properties of the quasar 3C 279. We observed 3C 279 in very high energy (VHE, E>100GeV) gamma rays, with the MAGIC telescopes during 2011, for the first time in stereoscopic mode. We combine these measurements with observations at other energy bands: in high energy (HE, E>100MeV) gamma rays from Fermi-LAT, in X-rays from RXTE, in the optical from the KVA telescope and in the radio at 43GHz, 37GHz and 15GHz from the VLBA, Metsahovi and OVRO radio telescopes and optical polarisation measurements from the KVA and Liverpool telescopes. During the MAGIC observations (February to April 2011) 3C 279 was in a low state in optical, X-ray and gamma rays. The MAGIC observations did not yield a significant detection. These upper limits are in agreement with the extrapolation of the HE gamma-ray spectrum, corrected for extragalactic background light absorption, from Fermi-LAT. The second part of the MAGIC observations in 2011 was triggered by a high activity state in the optical and gamma-ray bands. During the optical outburst the optical electric vector position angle rotatated of about 180 degrees. There was no simultaneous rotation of the 43GHz radio polarisation angle. No VHE gamma rays were detected by MAGIC, and the derived upper limits suggest the presence of a spectral break or curvature between the Fermi-LAT and MAGIC bands. The combined upper limits are the strongest derived to date for the source at VHE and below the level of the previously detected flux by a factor 2. Radiation models that include synchrotron and inverse Compton emissions match the optical to gamma-ray data, assuming an emission component inside the broad line region (BLR) responsible for the high-energy emission and one outside the BLR and the infrared torus causing optical and low-energy emission. We interpreted the optical polarisation with a bent trajectory model.
An exhaustive analysis of 9-year optical R-band photopolarimetric data of the flat-spectrum radio quasar 3C279 from 2008 February 27 to 2017 May 25 is presented, alongside with multiwavelength observing campaigns performed during the flaring activity exhibited in 2009 February/March, 2011 June, 2014 March/April, 2015 June and 2017 February. In the R-band, this source showed the maximum brightness state of $13.68pm 0.11$ mag ($1.36pm0.20$ mJy) on 2017 March 02, and the lowest brightness state ever recorded of $18.20pm 0.87$ mag ($0.16pm0.03$ mJy) on 2010 June 17. During the entire period of observations, the polarization degree varied between $0.48pm0.17$% and $31.65pm0.77$% and the electric vector position angle exhibited large rotations between $82.98^circ pm0.92$ and $446.32^circ pm1.95$. Optical polarization data show that this source has a stable polarized component that varied from $sim$6% (before the 2009 flare) to $sim$13% after the flare. The overall behavior of our polarized variability data supports the scenario of jet precessions as responsible of the observed large rotations of the electric vector position angle. Discrete correlation function analysis show that the lags between gamma-rays and X-rays compared to the optical R-band fluxes are $Delta t sim$ 31 d and $1$ d in 2009. Lags were also found among gamma-rays compared with X-rays and radio of $Delta t sim$ 30 d and $43$ d in 2011, and among radio and optical-R band of $Delta t sim$ 10 d in 2014. A very intense flare in 2017 was observed in optical bands with a dramatic variation in the polarization degree (from $sim$ 6% to 20%) in 90 days without exhibiting flaring activity in other wavelengths.