Fermi large area telescope detection of bright γ-ray outbursts from the peculiar quasar 4C+21.35

Abstract

In this paper, we report on the two-year-long Fermi-Large Area Telescope observation of the peculiar blazar 4C+21.35 (PKS 1222+216). This source was in a quiescent state from the start of the science operations of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2008 August until 2009 September, and then became more active, with gradually increasing flux and some moderately bright flares. In 2010 April and June, 4C+21.35 underwent a very strong GeV outburst composed of several major flares characterized by rise and decay timescales of the order of a day. During the outburst, the GeV spectra of 4C+21.35 displayed a broken power-law form with spectral breaks observed near 1-3 GeV photon energies. We demonstrate that, at least during the major flares, the jet in 4C+21.35 carried a total kinetic luminosity comparable to the total accretion power available to feed the outflow. We also discuss the origin of the break observed in the flaring spectra of 4C+21.35. We show that, in principle, a model involving annihilation of the GeV photons on the He II Lyman recombination continuum and line emission of "broad-line region" clouds may account for such. However, we also discuss the additional constraint provided by the detection of 4C+21.35 at 0.07-0.4TeV energies by the MAGIC telescope, which coincided with one of the GeV flares of the source. We argue that there are reasons to believe that the ≲TeV emission of 4C+21.35 (as well as the GeV emission of the source, if co-spatial) is not likely to be produced inside the broad-line region zone of highest ionization (∼1017cm from the nucleus), but instead originates further away from the active center, namely, around the characteristic scale of the hot dusty torus surrounding the 4C+21.35 nucleus (∼1019cm). © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..