Dortmund 2021 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 83: Gamma astronomy II

T 83.3: Talk

Thursday, March 18, 2021, 16:35–16:50, Th

FACT - Analysis of Flux Distributions of the Blazars Mrk 421 and Mrk 501 — •Laura Eisenberger for the FACT collaboration — University of Würzburg

The blazars Mrk 421 and Mrk 501 are the brightest known astrophysical sources at TeV energies. Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) viewed along the jet axis, known as blazars, show extremely variable gamma-ray emission which so far defies a compelling physical interpretation.

Theoretical models predict non-thermal emission due to particle acceleration at shock waves travelling down an initially relativistic jet. Doppler boosting of the emission from the fastest shocks results in high-amplitude flux states, while the multiple shocks from the decelerated jet further downstream produce an apparently steady baseline emission with weaker Doppler boosting. Studying the shape of flux distributions on time scales from minutes to years and investigating its temporal evolution provides crucial information for testing this scenario.

FACT, the First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope, has been designed for long-term and continuous monitoring in the very-high-energy regime. Here, we present results of our analysis of FACT data acquired during 786 nights (1882 hours in total) for Mrk 421 and 896 nights (1725 hours in total) for Mrk 501.