Publication: Fermi large area telescope observations of Markarian 421: the missing piece of its spectral energy distribution
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2011-08-01
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We report on the gamma-ray activity of the high-synchrotron-peaked BL Lacertae object Markarian 421 (Mrk 421) during the first 1.5 years of Fermi operation, from 2008 August 5 to 2010 March 12. We find that the Large Area Telescope (LAT) gamma-ray spectrum above 0.3 GeV can be well described by a power-law function with photon index Gamma = 1.78 +/- 0.02 and average photon flux F(>0.3 GeV) = (7.23 +/- 0.16) x 10(-8) ph cm(-2) s(-1). Over this time period, the Fermi-LAT spectrum above 0.3 GeV was evaluated on seven-day-long time intervals, showing significant variations in the photon flux (up to a factor similar to 3 from the minimum to the maximum flux) but mild spectral variations. The variability amplitude at X-ray frequencies measured by RXTE/ASM and Swift/BAT is substantially larger than that in gamma-rays measured by Fermi-LAT, and these two energy ranges are not significantly correlated. We also present the first results from the 4.5 month long multifrequency campaign on Mrk 421, which included the VLBA, Swift, RXTE, MAGIC, the F-GAMMA, GASP-WEBT, and other collaborations and instruments that provided excellent temporal and energy coverage of the source throughout the entire campaign (2009 January 19 to 2009 June 1). During this campaign, Mrk 421 showed a low activity at all wavebands. The extensive multi-instrument (radio to TeV) data set provides an unprecedented, complete look at the quiescent spectral energy distribution (SED) for this source. The broadband SED was reproduced with a leptonic (one-zone synchrotron self-Compton) and a hadronic model (synchrotron proton blazar). Both frameworks are able to describe the average SED reasonably well, implying comparable jet powers but very different characteristics for the blazar emission site.
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© The American Astronomical Society. We acknowledge the use of public data from the Swift and RXTE data archives. The Metsahovi team acknowledges the support from the Academy of Finland for the observing projects (numbers 212656, 210338, among others). This research has made use of data obtained from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), projects BK150, BP143, and BL149 (MOJAVE). The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The St. Petersburg University team acknowledges support from the Russian RFBR foundation via grant 09-02-00092. AZT-24 observations are made within an agreement between Pulkovo, Rome and Teramo observatories. This research is partly based on observations with the 100 m telescope of the MPIfR (Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie) at Effelsberg, as well as with the Medicina and Noto telescopes operated by INAF-Istituto di Radioastronomia. RATAN-600 observations were supported in part by the RFBR grant 08-02-00545 and the OVRO 40 m program was funded in part by NASA (NNX08AW31G) and the NSF (AST-0808050). The Submillimeter Array is a joint project between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics and is funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the Academia Sinica. M. Villata organized the optical-to-radio observations by GASP-WEBT as the president of the collaboration. The Abastumani Observatory team acknowledges financial support by the Georgian National Science Foundation through grant GNSF/ST07/4-180.
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