X-ray Intraday Variability and Power Spectral Density Profiles of the Blazar 3C 273 with XMM-Newton during 2000-2021

Abstract

We present X-ray intraday variability and power spectral density (PSD) analyses of the longest 23 pointed XMM-Newton observations of the blazar 3C 273 that were taken during 2000 -- 2021. These good time intervals contained between 5 and 24.6 hours of data. Variability has been estimated in three energy bands: 0.2 -- 2 keV (soft), 2 -- 10 keV (hard), and 0.2 -- 10 keV (total). Nine of the 23 observations exhibited some variability, though no major variations exceeding 5 per cent were detected. Typical timescales for variability were $\sim 1$ ks. For those variable light curves we find that a power-law model provides good fits to each PSD, with most of the slopes between $-1.7$ and $-2.8$. Although no variations of hardness ratio could be measured in any individual observation, an anti-correlation in flux and hardness ratio is found in long term data that indicates a harder when brighter trend. Our flux and spectral analyses indicate that both particle acceleration and synchrotron cooling processes make an important contribution to the emission from this blazar.

12 pages, 4 tables, 10 figures, Complete Fig. 1 - 6 will be published as supplementary material and can be provided on request; Accepted for Publication in MNRAS

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• X-ray Flux and Spectral Variability of the Blazar OJ 287 with Suzaku
• Study of Intra-Day Flux Distributions of Blazars Using XMM-Newton Satellite