Long-term Study of the Light Curve of PKS 1510-089 in GeV Energies
Abstract
We have analyzed data from the flat-spectrum radio quasar PKS 1510-089 collected over a period of eight years from 2008 August to 2016 December with the Fermi-LAT. We have identified several flares of this highly variable source, studied their temporal and spectral properties in detail, and compared with previous works on flares of PKS 1510-089. Five major flares and a few subflares or substructures have been identified in our study. The fastest variability time is found to be 1.30 ± 0.18 hr between MJD 55852.063 and 55852.188, where we estimate the minimum size of the emission region to be 4.85 × 1015 cm. In most of the flares, the spectral energy distributions are better fitted with a log-parabolic distribution compared to a simple power law or a power law with exponential cutoffs. This has strong physics implications regarding the nature of the high-energy gamma-ray emission region.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- July 2017
- DOI:
- 10.3847/1538-4357/aa78f4
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1706.02133
- Bibcode:
- 2017ApJ...844...62P
- Keywords:
-
- galaxies: active;
- gamma rays: galaxies;
- quasars: individual: PKS 1510-089;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
- E-Print:
- 29 pages, 29 figures, Accepted in ApJ