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Testing particle acceleration models for BL Lac jets with the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer
Mechanisms such as shock acceleration, magnetic reconnection in a kink unstable jet, and extreme turbulence in the jet flow are all expected to produce a distinctive time variability pattern of the X-ray polarization properties of high synchrotron peak blazars (HSP). To determine whether the recently launched Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) can follow the polarization variations induced by different particle acceleration mechanisms in blazar jets, we simulated observations of an HSP blazar variable in terms of the polarization degree and angle according to theoretical predictions. We used the Monte Carlo tool ixpeobssim to create realistic IXPE data products for each model and for three values of flux (i.e., 1, 5, and 10 × 10 −10 erg s −1 cm −2 ). We generated simulated light curves of the polarization degree and angle by time-slicing the simulated data into arbitrary short time bins. We used an χ 2 test to assess the performance of the observations in detecting the time variability of the polarization properties. In all cases, even when the light curves are diluted in an individual time bin, some degree of polarization is still measurable with IXPE. A series of ~10 ks long observations permits IXPE to follow the more »
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Award ID(s):
Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10343334
Journal Name:
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Volume:
662
Page Range or eLocation-ID:
A83
ISSN:
0004-6361
National Science Foundation
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