Multiwavelength observations of 3C 454.3 II. The AGILE 2007 December campaign

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive multiwavelength observational campaign of the blazar 3C 454.3 in December 2007, revealing correlated variability and spectral features that challenge standard emission models, and suggesting additional components like a hot corona.

Contribution

It provides the first simultaneous broad-band spectral energy distributions of 3C 454.3 during a flaring period, highlighting the need for an extra emission component beyond standard external Compton models.

Findings

Detected gamma-ray flux typical of flaring states (~250x10^{-8} ph cm^-2 s^-1).

Observed a possible ~1-day delay of gamma-ray emission relative to optical.

Standard external Compton models do not fully explain the SEDs, indicating additional emission components.

Abstract

We report on the second AGILE multiwavelength campaign of the blazar 3C 454.3 during the first half of December 2007. This campaign involved AGILE, Spitzer, Swift,Suzaku,the WEBT consortium,the REM and MITSuME telescopes,offering a broad band coverage that allowed for a simultaneous sampling of the synchrotron and inverse Compton (IC) emissions.The 2-week AGILE monitoring was accompanied by radio to optical monitoring by WEBT and REM and by sparse observations in mid-Infrared and soft/hard X-ray energy bands performed by means of Target of Opportunity observations by Spitzer, Swift and Suzaku, respectively.The source was detected with an average flux of~250x10^{-8}ph cm^-2s^-1 above 100 MeV,typical of its flaring states.The simultaneous optical and gamma-ray monitoring allowed us to study the time-lag associated with the variability in the two energy bands, resulting in a possible ~1-day delay of the gamma-ray emission with respect to the optical one. From the simultaneous optical and gamma-ray fast flare detected on December 12, we can constrain the delay between the gamma-ray and optical emissions within 12 hours. Moreover, we obtain three Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) with simultaneous data for 2007 December 5, 13, 15, characterized by the widest multifrequency coverage. We found that a model with an external Compton on seed photons by a standard disk and reprocessed by the Broad Line Regions does not describe in a satisfactory way the SEDs of 2007 December 5, 13 and 15. An additional contribution, possibly from the hot corona with T=10^6 K surrounding the jet, is required to account simultaneously for the softness of the synchrotron and the hardness of the inverse Compton emissions during those epochs.