Publication: Multifrequency observations of the candidate neutrino-emitting blazar BZB J0955+3551
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2020-10
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IOP Publishing Ltd
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Abstract
The recent spatial and temporal coincidence of the blazar TXS 0506+056 with the IceCube-detected neutrino event IC-170922A has opened up a realm of multimessenger astronomy with blazar jets as a plausible site of cosmic-ray acceleration. After TXS 0506+056, a second blazar, BZB J0955+3551, was recently found to be spatially coincident with the IceCube-detected neutrino event IC-200107A and undergoing its brightest X-ray flare measured so far. Here we present the results of our multifrequency campaign to study this peculiar event that includes observations with the NuSTAR, Swift, Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), and 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). The optical spectroscopic observation from GTC secured its redshift as z = 0.55703_(-0.00021) ^(+0.00033) and the central black hole mass as 10^(8.90 0.16) Mꙩ. Both NuSTAR and NICER data reveal a rapid flux variability, albeit at low significance (</˷3.5σ). We explore the origin of the target photon field needed for the photopion production using analytical calculations and considering the observed optical-to-X-ray flux level. We conclude that seed photons may originate from outside the jet, similar to that reported for TXS 0506+056, although a scenario invoking a comoving target photon field (e.g., electron synchrotron) cannot be ruled out. The electromagnetic output from the neutrino-producing photohadronic processes are likely to make only a subdominant contribution to the observed spectral energy distribution, suggesting that the X-ray flaring event may not be directly connected with IC-200107A.
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© 2020. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Thanks are due to the journal referee for constructive criticism. We thank T. Glauch and F. Oikonomou for fruitful discussions on the interpretation of neutrino alerts. This work was supported by the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association. We are thankful to the NuSTAR and Swift PIs for approving our DDT requests and the mission operations team for quickly scheduling the observations. Thanks are also due to the NICER PI for observing the source as a DDT ToO. A.D. acknowledges the support of the Ramón y Cajal program from the Spanish MINECO. We are grateful to staff astronomer Antonio Cabrera at GTC for carrying out the OSIRIS observation. This work is based on observations made with the GTC telescope in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias under Directorʼs Discretionary Time. The work of M.B. is supported through the South African Research Chair Initiative of the National Research Foundation11 and the Department of Science and Innovation of South Africa under SARChI Chair grant No. 64789. A.G.P. and A.O.G. acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under grant Nos. AYA2016-75808-R and RTI2018-096188-B-I00, which are partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). A.O.G. also acknowledges financial support from the Comunidad de Madrid Tec2Space project S2018/NMT-4291. Part of this work is based on results provided by the ASM/RXTE teams at MIT and the RXTE SOF and GOF at NASA’s GSFC.