XMM-Newton observations of the TeV BL Lac object PKS 2155--304 in 2006: signature of inverse Compton X-ray emission?

TL;DR

This study reports the first detection of inverse Compton X-ray emission below 10 keV in the high-energy peaked BL Lac PKS 2155--304, revealing spectral features indicative of a mixture of synchrotron and IC processes.

Contribution

It provides the first evidence of inverse Compton X-ray emission below 10 keV in a typical HBL, suggesting a transition between HBLs and LBLs based on spectral analysis.

Findings

Concave X-ray spectra indicate a mixture of synchrotron and IC emission.

Spectral hardening at ~4 keV suggests IC contribution in X-ray band.

Downward shift of synchrotron peak to optical band inferred.

Abstract

This paper reports the first discovery of possible inverse Compoton (IC) X-ray emission below 10 keV in the typical high-energy peaked BL Lac object (HBL) PKS 2155--304. Two XMM-Newton observations performed in 2006 reveal that the 0.6--10 keV X-ray spectra of the source harden ($\Delta\Gamma \sim$ 0.1--0.3) at break energies of about 4 keV. The concave X-ray spectra of the source could be easily interpretated by a mixture of a steep component (i.e., the high energy tail of the synchrotron emission) and a flat one (i.e., the low energy side of the IC emission). However, the steep spectra ($\Gamma \sim$ 2.3) in the hard X-rays indicate that the synchrotron emission still domiantes over the IC one, while the latter is effectively present and perceived as flattening the synchrotron spectrum in this energy range. The quasi-simultaneous optical-UV-X-ray spectral energy distributions (SEDs) obtained with XMM-Newton suggest that the concave X-ray spectra of the source could be the result of down-ward shift of the synchrotron peak frequency to the optical band, incuring the IC emisssion to become more important in the hard ($\sim 4$--10 keV) X-ray band with respective to other cases in which the synchrotron emission peaks in the UV-soft-X-ray range. This discovery provides a new clue for a smooth transition between HBLs and the low-energy peaked BL Lac objects (LBLs).