Speaker
Description
Markarian 501 (Mrk 501) is one of the brightest very high energy (VHE, E> 100 GeV) gamma-ray blazars. It is located in our neighborhood, at redshift z = 0.034. During a multi-wavelength campaign in July 2014, Mrk 501 displayed the highest X-ray activity observed by the Neil Gehrels Swift X-ray telescope (XRT) since its launch. The X-ray spectra displayed during this flaring episode were very hard, and showed variability on nightly timescales. On 2014 July 19, in coincidence with the peak of the X-ray activity, a hint of a narrow feature at ~3 TeV was observed with the MAGIC telescopes. Such feature makes the VHE spectrum inconsistent with the classical analytic functions used to describe the measured VHE spectra (power law, log-parabola, and log-parabola with exponential cutoff) at more than 3σ. A double-log-parabola fit is preferred w.r.t. a single one at more than 4σ confidence level. Three different scenarios that could produce such an effect are discussed: (a) a pileup in the electron energy distribution; (b) a two-zone Synchrotron Self-Compton (SSC) emission model; and (c) a pair cascade model. In this contribution we will present the observational details and a general overview of the possible physical mechanisms of this unprecedented observation.
Keywords
galaxies: active / BL Lacertae objects: individual: Mrk 501 / gamma rays: galaxies / X-rays: galaxies
| Subcategory | Experimental Results |
|---|---|
| Collaboration | MAGIC |
| other Collaboration | Fermi-LAT |
