Suzaku Observation of the TeV Blazar 1ES 1218+304: Clues on Particle Acceleration in an Extreme TeV Blazar
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Abstract
We observed the TeV blazar 1ES 1218+304 with the X-ray astronomy satellite Suzaku in May 2006. At the beginning of the two-day continuous observation, we detected a large flare in which the 5 - 10 keV flux changed by a factor of approximately 2 on a timescale of 5 x 10(exp 4) s. During the flare, the increase in the hard X-ray flux clearly lagged behind that observed in the soft X-rays, with the maximum lag of 2.3 x 10(exp 4) s observed between the 0.3-1 keV and 5-10 keV bands. Furthermore we discovered that the temporal profile of the flare clearly changes with energy, being more symmetric at higher energies. From the spectral fitting of multi-wavelength data assuming a one-zone, homogeneous synchrotron self-Compton model, we obtain B approximately 0.047 G, emission region size R = 3.0 x 10(exp 16) cm for an appropriate beaming with a Doppler factor of delta = 20. This value of B is in good agreement with an independent estimate through the model fit to the observed time lag ascribing the energy-dependent variability to differential acceleration timescale of relativistic electrons provided that the gyro-factor xi is 10(exp 5).
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