Gamma-Ray Flares in the Long-term Light Curve of 3C 454.3

Abstract

3C 454.3 is frequently observed in the flaring state. The long-term light curve of this source has been analyzed with 9 yr (2008 August–2017 July) of data from the Fermi-LAT detector. We have identified five flares and one quiescent state. The flares have substructures with many peaks during the flaring phase. We have estimated the rise and decay time of the flares and compared with flares of other similar sources. The modeling of gamma-ray spectral energy distributions shows in most cases that a log-parabola function gives the best fit to the data. We have done time-dependent leptonic modeling of two of the flares, for which simultaneous multiwavelength data are available. These two long-lasting flares, Flare-2A and Flare-2D, continued for 95 and 133 days, respectively. We have used the average values of Doppler factor, injected luminosity in electrons, size of the emission region, and the magnetic field in the emission region in modeling these flares. The emission region is assumed to be in the broad-line region in our single-zone model. The energy losses (synchrotron, synchrotron self-Compton, external Compton) and escape of electrons from the emission region have been included while doing the modeling. Although the total jet powers required to model these flares with the leptonic model are higher compared to other sources, they are always found to be lower than the Eddington luminosity of 3C 454.3. We also select some flaring peaks and show that the time variation of the Doppler factor or the injected luminosity in electrons over short timescales can explain their light curves.