Swift observations of high-redshift radio-loud quasars

TL;DR

This study uses Swift observations to analyze four high-redshift radio-loud quasars, revealing their X-ray spectral properties, variability, and the dominance of jet emission at high frequencies, with thermal disk emission also detected.

Contribution

First detailed Swift X-ray and UV observations of four high-redshift radio-loud quasars, characterizing their spectral properties and emission mechanisms.

Findings

Detected >5sigma in BAT 15-150 keV band for all sources.

Observed spectral curvature in XRT data, modeled by absorption or broken power law.

Jet emission dominates >~10^16 Hz, with thermal disk emission contributing at optical-UV frequencies.

Abstract

We report on Swift observations of four z>2 radio-loud quasars (0212+735, 0537-286, 0836+710, and 2149-307), classified as blazars. The sources, well-known emitters at soft-medium X-rays, were detected at >5sigma with the BAT experiment in 15-150 keV. No flux variability was detected within the XRT and BAT exposures, with the exception of 0836+710 which shows an increase of a factor 4 of the 15-150 keV flux on a timescale of one month. The 0.3-10 keV spectra are well fitted by power law models, with rather hard continua (photon indices Gamma_XRT ~1.3-1.5); similarly, the 15-150 keV spectra are described by power laws with Gamma_BAT ~1.3-1.8. The XRT data exhibit spectral curvature, which can be modeled either in terms of excess absorption along the line of sight, or a downward-curved broken power law. In the former case, if the excess N_H is at the rest-frame of the source, columns of N_H^z=(0.3-6)x10^22 cm^-2 are measured. Modeling of the SEDs of the four quasars shows that the emission at the higher frequencies, >~ 10^16 Hz, is dominated by the jet, while the steep optical-to-UV continua, observed with the UVOT, can be attributed to thermal emission from the accretion disk. The disk luminosity is between 1% and 10% the jet power, similar to other powerful blazars.