Suzaku observation of TeV blazar the 1ES 1218+304: clues on particle acceleration in an extreme TeV blazar

TL;DR

This study used Suzaku to observe a TeV blazar, revealing a large flare with energy-dependent time lags and spectral changes, providing insights into particle acceleration mechanisms in extreme blazars.

Contribution

First detailed Suzaku observation of 1ES 1218+304 capturing energy-dependent flare dynamics and constraining magnetic field and acceleration processes.

Findings

Detected a factor of 2 flux increase during flare

Observed a maximum lag of 2.3x10^4 s between soft and hard X-rays

Estimated magnetic field strength of ~0.047 G and emission region size

Abstract

We observed the TeV blazar 1ES 1218+304 with the X-ray astronomy satellite Suzaku in May 2006. At the beginning of the two-day continuous observation, we detected a large flare in which the 5-10 keV flux changed by a factor of ~2 on a timescale of 5x10^4 s. During the flare, the increase in the hard X-ray flux clearly lagged behind that observed in the soft X-rays, with the maximum lag of 2.3x10^4 s observed between the 0.3-1 keV and 5-10 keV bands. Furthermore we discovered that the temporal profile of the flare clearly changes with energy, being more symmetric at higher energies. From the spectral fitting of multi-wavelength data assuming a one-zone, homogeneous synchrotron self-Compton model, we obtain B~0.047 G, emission region size R = 3.0x10^16 cm for an appropriate beaming with a Doppler factor of delta = 20. This value of B is in good agreement with an independent estimate through the model fit to the observed time lag ascribing the energy-dependent variability to differential acceleration timescale of relativistic electrons provided that the gyro-factor \xi is 10^5.