High energy properties of the flat spectrum radio quasar 4C 50.11

TL;DR

This paper studies the gamma-ray and X-ray emissions of quasar 4C 50.11, revealing rapid variability, spectral correlations, and modeling the jet emission outside the broad line region during active states.

Contribution

First detection of a correlation between peak energy and spectral curvature in gamma-ray spectra of a blazar, with detailed broadband spectral modeling of 4C 50.11.

Findings

Gamma-ray flux increased by over three times during active periods.

Detected two flares with variability timescales of hours.

Broadband spectrum suggests emission region outside the broad line region.

Abstract

We investigate the $\gamma$-ray and X-ray properties of the flat spectrum radio quasar (FSRQ) \4c50 at redshift $z= 1.517$. The {\it Fermi} Large Area Telescope (LAT) data indicate that this source was in an active state since 2013 July. During the active period, the $\gamma$-ray flux increased by more than a factor of three and two distinct flares were detected with the variability timescale as short as several hours. The $\gamma$-ray spectra can be well fitted by a log-parabola. From the fitting, we find a correlation between the peak energy and spectral curvature for the $\gamma$-ray spectra, which is the first time seen in $\gamma$-ray emission from a blazar. The {\it Swift} X-ray Telescope (XRT) data show that the source was variable at X-ray energies, but no evidence shows flux or spectral changes related to the $\gamma$-ray activity. The broad-band X-ray spectrum obtained with {\it Swift} XRT and {\it NuSTAR} is well described by a broken PL model, with an extremely hard spectrum ($\Gamma_{1} \sim 0.1$) below the break energy, $E_{\rm break} \sim 2.1 {\rm keV}$, and $\Gamma_{2} \sim 1.5$ above the break energy. The spectral steepening below $\sim 3$ keV is likely due to the low energy cut-off in the energy distribution of the photon-emitting electron population. Both the $\gamma$-ray and X-ray emission appear harder when brighter. The broad-band spectral energy distribution (SED) is constructed for the source, and we provide a model fit to the SED. Our modeling suggests that the emission region should be outside the broad line region, and the properties of the region indicate a jet with 42\% of the Eddington power during the active state.