Supermassive Black Holes in Early-Type Galaxies: Relationship with Radio Emission and Constraints on the Black Hole Mass Function

Using recently published estimates - based on high spatial resolution spectroscopy - of the mass M_{BH} of nuclear black holes for a sample of nearby galaxies, we explore the dependence of galaxy nucleus emissivity at various wavelengths on M_{BH}. We confirm an almost linear scaling of the black hole mass with the baryonic mass of the host spheroidal galaxy. A remarkably tight relationship is also found with both nuclear and total radio centimetric flux, with a very steep dependence of the radio flux on M_{BH} (P\propto M_{BH}^{2.5}). The high-frequency radio power is thus a very good tracer of a super-massive black hole, and a good estimator of its mass. This, together with the lack of significant correlations with the low-energy X-ray and far-IR flux, supports the view that advection-dominated accretion is ruling the energy output in the low-accretion rate regime. Using the tight dependence of total radio power on M_{BH} and the rich statistics of radio emission of galaxies, we derive an estimate of the mass function of remnants in the nearby universe. This is compared with current models of quasar and AGN activity and of the origin of the hard X-ray background (HXRB). As for the former, continuous long-lived AGN activity is excluded by the present data with high significance, whereas the assumption of a short-lived, possibly recurrent, activity pattern gives remarkable agreement. The presently estimated black hole mass function also implies that the HXRB has been produced by a numerous population (\sim 10^{-2} Mpc^{-3}) of moderately massive (M_{BH}\sim 10^7 M_\odot) black holes.Comment: 9 LaTex pages, 6 PS figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Correlated variability in the blazar 3C 454.3

The blazar 3C 454.3 was revealed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to be in an exceptionally high flux state in July 2008. Accordingly, we performed a multi-wavelength monitoring campaign on this blazar using IR and optical observations from the SMARTS telescopes, optical, UV and X-ray data from the Swift satellite, and public-release gamma-ray data from Fermi. We find an excellent correlation between the IR, optical, UV and gamma-ray light curves, with a time lag of less than one day. The amplitude of the infrared variability is comparable to that in gamma-rays, and larger than at optical or UV wavelengths. The X-ray flux is not strongly correlated with either the gamma-rays or longer wavelength data. These variability characteristics find a natural explanation in the external Compton model, in which electrons with Lorentz factor gamma~10^(3-4) radiate synchrotron emission in the infrared-optical and also scatter accretion disk or emission line photons to gamma-ray energies, while much cooler electrons (gamma~10^(1-2)) produce X-rays by scattering synchrotron or other ambient photons.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, submitted to ApJ Letter

3C454.3 reveals the structure and physics of its 'blazar zone'

Recent multi-wavelength observations of 3C454.3, in particular during its giant outburst in 2005, put severe constraints on the location of the 'blazar zone', its dissipative nature, and high energy radiation mechanisms. As the optical, X-ray, and millimeter light-curves indicate, significant fraction of the jet energy must be released in the vicinity of the millimeter-photosphere, i.e. at distances where, due to the lateral expansion, the jet becomes transparent at millimeter wavelengths. We conclude that this region is located at ~10 parsecs, the distance coinciding with the location of the hot dust region. This location is consistent with the high amplitude variations observed on ~10 day time scale, provided the Lorentz factor of a jet is ~20. We argue that dissipation is driven by reconfinement shock and demonstrate that X-rays and gamma-rays are likely to be produced via inverse Compton scattering of near/mid IR photons emitted by the hot dust. We also infer that the largest gamma-to-synchrotron luminosity ratio ever recorded in this object - having taken place during its lowest luminosity states - can be simply due to weaker magnetic fields carried by a less powerful jet.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Constraining duty cycles through a Bayesian technique

The duty cycle (DC) of astrophysical sources is generally defined as the fraction of time during which the sources are active. However, DCs are generally not provided with statistical uncertainties, since the standard approach is to perform Monte Carlo bootstrap simulations to evaluate them, which can be quite time consuming for a large sample of sources. As an alternative, considerably less time-consuming approach, we derived the theoretical expectation value for the DC and its error for sources whose state is one of two possible, mutually exclusive states, inactive (off) or flaring (on), as based on a finite set of independent observational data points. Following a Bayesian approach, we derived the analytical expression for the posterior, the conjugated distribution adopted as prior, and the expectation value and variance. We applied our method to the specific case of the inactivity duty cycle (IDC) for supergiant fast X-ray transients. We also studied IDC as a function of the number of observations in the sample. Finally, we compare the results with the theoretical expectations. We found excellent agreement with our findings based on the standard bootstrap method. Our Bayesian treatment can be applied to all sets of independent observations of two-state sources, such as active galactic nuclei, X-ray binaries, etc. In addition to being far less time consuming than bootstrap methods, the additional strength of this approach becomes obvious when considering a well-populated class of sources ($N_{\rm src} \geq 50$) for which the prior can be fully characterized by fitting the distribution of the observed DCs for all sources in the class, so that, through the prior, one can further constrain the DC of a new source by exploiting the information acquired on the DC distribution derived from the other sources. [Abridged]Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Supporting material at http://www.ifc.inaf.it/~romano/Sfxts/IDCSims/index.htm

Monitoring Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients with Swift. Results from the first year

Swift has allowed the possibility to give Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs), the new class of High Mass X-ray Binaries discovered by INTEGRAL, non serendipitous attention throughout all phases of their life. We present our results based on the first year of intense Swift monitoring of four SFXTs, IGR J16479-4514, XTE J1739-302, IGR J17544-2619 and AX J1841.0-0536. We obtain the first assessment of how long each source spends in each state using a systematic monitoring with a sensitive instrument. The duty-cycle of inactivity is 17, 28, 39, 55% (5% uncertainty), for IGR J16479-4514, AX J1841.0-0536, XTE J1739-302, and IGR J17544-2619, respectively, so that true quiescence is a rare state. This demonstrates that these transients accrete matter throughout their life at different rates. AX J1841.0-0536 is the only source which has not undergone a bright outburst during our campaign. Although individual sources behave somewhat differently, common X-ray characteristics of this class are emerging such as outburst lengths well in excess of hours, with a multiple peaked structure. A high dynamic range (including bright outbursts) of 4 orders of magnitude has been observed. We performed out-of-outburst intensity-based spectroscopy. Spectral fits with an absorbed blackbody always result in blackbody radii of a few hundred meters, consistent with being emitted from a small portion of the neutron star surface, very likely the neutron star polar caps. We also present the UVOT data of these sources. (Abridged)Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 20 pages, 9 figures, 8 table

The 100-month Swift catalogue of supergiant fast X-ray transients I. BAT on-board and transient monitor flares

We investigate the characteristics of bright flares for a sample of supergiant fast X-ray transients and their relation to the orbital phase. We have retrieved all Swift/BAT Transient Monitor light curves, and collected all detections in excess of $5\sigma$ from both daily- and orbital-averaged light curves in the time range of 2005-Feb-12 to 2013-May-31. We also considered all on-board detections as recorded in the same time span and selected those within 4 arcmin of each source in our sample and in excess of $5\sigma$. We present a catalogue of over a thousand BAT flares from 11 SFXTs, down to 15-150keV fluxes of $\sim6\times10^{-10}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ (daily timescale) and $\sim1.5\times10^{-9}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ (orbital timescale, averaging $\sim800$s) and spanning 100 months. The great majority of these flares are unpublished. This population is characterized by short (a few hundred seconds) and relatively bright (in excess of 100mCrab, 15-50keV) events. In the hard X-ray, these flares last in general much less than a day. Clustering of hard X-ray flares can be used to indirectly measure the length of an outburst, even when the low-level emission is not detected. We construct the distributions of flares, of their significance (in terms of sigma) and their flux as a function of orbital phase, to infer the properties of these binary systems. In particular, we observe a trend of clustering of flares at some phases as $P_{\rm orb}$ increases, as consistent with a progression from tight, circular or mildly eccentric orbits at short periods, to wider and more eccentric orbits at longer orbital periods. Finally, we estimate the expected number of flares for a given source for our limiting flux and provide the recipe for calculating them for the limiting flux of future hard X-ray observatories. (Abridged).Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. 23 pages, 8 figures. Full catalog files will be available at CDS and at http://www.ifc.inaf.it/sfxt/ Fixed typos and updated reference