The gamma-ray brightest days of the blazar 3C 454.3

Understand

In the first week of December 2009, the blazar 3C 454.3 became the brightest high energy source in the sky.

• Its photon flux reached and surpassed the level of 1e-5 ph/cm2/s above 100 MeV.
• The Swift satellite observed the source several times during the period of high gamma-ray flux, and we can construct really simultaneous spectral energy distributions (SED) before, during, and after the luminosity peak.
• Our main findings are: i) the optical, X-ray and gamma-ray fluxes correlate; ii) the gamma-ray flux varies quadratically (or even more) with the optical flux; iii) a simple one-zone synchrotron inverse Compton model can account for all the considered SED; iv) in this framework the gamma-ray vs optical flux correlation can be explained if the magnetic field is slightly fainter when the overall jet luminosity is stronger; v) the power that the jet spent to produce the peak gamma-ray luminosity is of the same order, or larger, than the accretion disk luminosity.