Exploring the very high energy gamma-ray emission (E > 100 GeV) of the hard spectrum Fermi sources 1FGL J2001.1+4351 and B3-2247+381 with MAGIC

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of very high energy gamma-ray emission from two Fermi LAT sources using MAGIC, highlighting their variability, spectral properties, and implications for understanding their emission regions.

Contribution

It presents the first detection of VHE gamma-ray emission from these sources, including variability analysis and spectral modeling, expanding knowledge of high-energy astrophysical phenomena.

Findings

Detection of VHE gamma-ray emission from 1FGL J2001.1+4351 and B3-2247+381

Short-term variability observed in 1FGL J2001.1+4351

Steady flux observed in B3-2247+381 over 13 days

Abstract

MAGIC, a stereoscopic cherenkov telescope array, sensitive to gamma-rays between 50 GeV and several tens of TeV, is ideally suited to observe promising Fermi LAT sources with a hard \gamma-ray spectrum. Here we discuss the discovery of very high energy gamma-ray (VHE, E > 100 GeV) emission from the Fermi LAT sources 1FGL J2001.1+4351 and B3-2247+381 with MAGIC. 1FGL J2001.1+4351, recently identified as MG4 J200112+4352 (Bassani et al. 2010), is most likely a high peaked BL Lacertae object. The red shift of this source is still unknown, though the identification of the optical host galaxy suggests z < 0.2. MAGIC observations indicate short term variability, since the source showed a strong emission of 20% of the Crab Nebula flux above 90 GeV during the 16th of July 2010 and none of the other observation nights yielded a detection. B3-2247+381 is classified as a BL Lac object at z = 0.1187 (Veron-Cetty & Veron catalogue of known AGN). In July 2010 it showed increased optical activity in the Tuorla blazar monitoring program, which subsequently activated target of opportunity observations by MAGIC. Within 18 hours of observation time extended over 13 days between September and October 2010, a strong signal was found above an energy threshold of 150 GeV. The flux (4% of the Crab Nebula) is consistent with being constant over the entire observation campaign. We compute the light curves, model the spectral energy distributions of these new very high energy gamma-ray emitters and discuss the physical properties of the VHE gamma-ray emission region.