Blazars: the gamma-ray view of AGILE

TL;DR

This paper reviews AGILE satellite observations of blazars, highlighting their gamma-ray detections, rapid response capabilities, and multiwavelength campaigns that enhance understanding of their emission mechanisms.

Contribution

It provides an overview of AGILE's gamma-ray detections of blazars and discusses multiwavelength data collection for studying their spectral energy distributions.

Findings

Detection of several bright blazars at high significance.

Rapid response to blazar activity changes enabling multiwavelength observations.

Insights into emission mechanisms from combined gamma-ray and other wavelength data.

Abstract

Since its launch in April 2007, the AGILE satellite detected with its Gamma-Ray Imaging Detector (GRID) several blazars at high significance: 3C 279, 3C 454.3, PKS 1510-089, S5 0716+714, 3C 273, W Comae, Mrk 421 and PKS 0537-441. Moreover, AGILE was able both to rapidly respond to sudden changes in blazar activity state at other wavelengths and to alert other telescopes quickly in response to changes in the gamma-ray fluxes. Thus, we were able to obtain multiwavelength data from other observatories such as Spitzer, Swift, RXTE, Suzaku, INTEGRAL, MAGIC, VERITAS, as well as radio-to-optical coverage by means of the GASP Project of the WEBT and REM. This large multifrequency coverage gave us the opportunity to study the Spectral Energy Distribution of these sources from radio to gamma-rays energy bands and to investigate the different mechanisms responsible for their emission. We present an overview of the AGILE results on these gamma-ray blazars and the relative multifrequency data.