Inverse Compton X-ray Emissions from TeV blazar Mrk421 during a Historical Low-Flux State Observed with NuSTAR

TL;DR

This paper reports the detection of excess hard X-ray emission from the TeV blazar Mrk421 during a low-flux state, revealing inverse Compton processes and spectral variability using NuSTAR observations.

Contribution

It presents the first detection of excess hard X-ray emission during a low-flux state of Mrk421, linking it to inverse Compton emission and constraining electron energy distribution.

Findings

Detected excess hard X-ray emission above 20 keV during low-flux state.

Observed variability in flux by a factor of three over a week.

Connected hard X-ray excess with inverse Compton emission component.

Abstract

We report on the detection of excess hard X-ray emission from the TeV BL Lac object Mrk421 during the historical low-flux state of the source in January 2013. NuSTAR observations were conducted four times between MJD56294 and MJD56312 with a total exposure of 80.9 ksec. The source flux in the 3-40 keV range was nearly constant except for MJD56307, when the average flux level increased by a factor of three. Throughout the exposure, the X-ray spectra of Mrk421 were well represented by a steep power-law model with a photon index of 3.1, although a significant excess was noted above 20 keV in the MJD56302 data when the source was in its faintest state. Moreover, Mrk421 was detected at more than the 4-sigma level in the 40-79 keV count maps for both MJD56307 and MJD56302 but not during the remaining two observations. The detected excess hard X-ray emissions connect smoothly with the extrapolation of the high-energy gamma-ray continuum of the blazar constrained by Fermi-LAT during the source quiescence. These findings indicate that, while the overall X-ray spectrum of Mrk421 is dominated by the highest-energy tail of the synchrotron continuum, the variable excess hard X-ray emission above 20 keV (on the timescale of a week) is related to the inverse Compton emission component. We discuss the resulting constraints on the variability and spectral properties of the low-energy segment of the electron energy distribution in the source.