Swift X-ray Telescope Monitoring of Fermi-LAT Gamma Ray Sources of Interest

TL;DR

This paper details a long-term Swift X-ray monitoring program of Fermi gamma-ray sources, providing a systematic analysis of their variability and making the data publicly available for further research.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive dataset and analysis methods for monitoring gamma-ray sources, enhancing long-term variability studies and multi-wavelength research capabilities.

Findings

Systematic light curves and hardness ratios for 23 gamma-ray sources.

Identification of excess variability in monitored sources.

Public online repository of data for community use.

Abstract

We describe a long-term Swift monitoring program of Fermi gamma-ray sources, particularly the 23 gamma-ray "sources of interest." We present a systematic analysis of the Swift X-ray Telescope light curves and hardness ratios of these sources, and we calculate excess variability. We present data for the time interval of 2004 December 22 through 2012 August 31. We describe the analysis methods used to produce these data products, and we discuss the availability of these data in an online repository, which continues to grow from more data on these sources and from a growing list of additional sources. This database should be of use to the broad astronomical community for long term studies of the variability of these objects and for inclusion in multi-wavelength studies.