X-ray spectral studies of TeV γ-ray emitting blazars

This work is a summary of the X-ray spectral studies of 29 TeV (10¹² eV, tera-electron-volt) γ-ray emitting blazars observed with Swift/XRT, especially focusing on sources for which the X-ray regime allows us to study the low- and the high-energy ends of the particle distribution function. Variability studies require simultaneous coverage, ideally sampling different flux states of each source. This is achieved using X-ray observations by disentangling the high-energy end of the synchrotron emission and the low-energy end of the Compton emission, which are produced by the same electron population. We focused on a sample of 29 TeV γ-ray emitting blazars with the best signal-to-noise X-ray observations collected with Swift/XRT in the energy range 0.3-10 keV during 10 yr of Swift/XRT operations. We investigate the X-ray spectral shapes and the effects of different corrections for neutral hydrogen absorption and decompose the synchrotron and inverse Compton components. For five sources (3C 66A, S5 0716+714, W Comae, 4C +21.35 and BL Lacertae) a superposition of both components is observed in the X-ray band, permitting simultaneous, time-resolved studies of both ends of the electron distribution. The analysis of multi-epoch observations revealed that the break energy of the X-ray spectrum varies only by a small factor with flux changes. Flux variability is more pronounced in the synchrotron domain (high-energy end of the electron distribution) than in the Compton domain (low-energy end of the electron distribution). The spectral shape of the Compton domain is stable, while the flux of the synchrotron domain is variable. These changes cannot be described by simple variations of the cut-off energy, suggesting that the high-energy end of the electron distribution is not generally well described by cooling only.