The bright gamma-ray flare of 3C 279 in 2015 June: AGILE detection and multifrequency follow-up observations
Files
Accepted manuscript
Date
2018-04-01
Authors
Pittori, Carlotta
Lucarelli, Fabrizio
Verrecchia, Francesco
Raiteri, Claudia Maria
Villata, M.
Vittorini, Valerio
Tavani, Marco
Puccetti, Simonetta
Perri, M.
Version
Accepted manuscript
OA Version
Citation
C Pittori, F Lucarelli, F Verrecchia, CM Raiteri, M Villata, V Vittorini, M Tavani, S Puccetti, M Perri, I Donnarumma, S Vercellone, JA Acosta-Pulido, R Bachev, E Benitez, GA Borman, MI Carnerero, D Carosati, WP Chen, Sh A Ehgamberdiev, A Goded, TS Grishina, D Hiriart, HY Hsiao, SG Jorstad, GN Kimeridze, EN Kopatskaya, OM Kurtanidze, SO Kurtanidze, VM Larionov, LV Larionova, AP Marscher, DO Mirzaqulov, DA Morozova, K Nilsson, MR Samal, LA Sigua, B Spassov, A Strigachev, LO Takalo, LA Antonelli, A Bulgarelli, P Cattaneo, S Colafrancesco, P Giommi, F Longo, A Morselli, F Paoletti. 2018. "The Bright gamma-ray Flare of 3C 279 in 2015 June: AGILE Detection and Multifrequency Follow-up Observations." ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, Volume 856, Issue 2, pp. ? - ? (9). https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aab1f9
Abstract
We report the AGILE detection and the results of the multifrequency follow-up observations of a bright γ-ray flare of the blazar 3C 279 in 2015 June. We use AGILE and Fermi gamma-ray data, together with Swift X-ray andoptical-ultraviolet data, and ground-based GASP-WEBT optical observations, including polarization information, to study the source variability and the overall spectral energy distribution during the γ-ray flare. The γ-ray flaring data, compared with as yet unpublished simultaneous optical data that will allow constraints on the big blue bump disk luminosity, show very high Compton dominance values of ~100, with the ratio of γ-ray to optical emission rising by a factor of three in a few hours. The multiwavelength behavior of the source during the flare challenges one-zone leptonic theoretical models. The new observations during the 2015 June flare are also compared with already published data and nonsimultaneous historical 3C 279 archival data.