Detection of X-Ray Polarization from the Blazar 1ES 1959+650 with the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer

Copyright and License

© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Acknowledgement

The authors thank Alex Chen for useful discussions on the expectations for a polarized flux arising from magnetic reconnection events. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is a joint US and Italian mission. The US contribution is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and led and managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), with industry partner Ball Aerospace (contract NNM15AA18C). The Italian contribution is supported by the Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, ASI) through contract ASI-OHBI-2017-12-I.0, agreements ASI-INAF-2017-12-H0 and ASI-INFN-2017.13-H0, and its Space Science Data Center (SSDC), and by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy. This research used data products provided by the IXPE Team (MSFC, SSDC, INAF, and INFN) and distributed with additional software tools by the High-Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). We acknowledge financial support from ASI-INAF agreement No. 2022-14-HH.0. I.L. was supported by the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities under contract with NASA. The research at Boston University was supported in part by National Science Foundation grant AST-2108622 and by NASA Swift Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC22K0537 and Fermi Guest Investigator grants 80NSSC21K1917 and 80NSSC22K1571. This research has made use of data from the RoboPol program, a collaboration between Caltech, the University of Crete, IA-FORTH, IUCAA, the MPIfR, and the Nicolaus Copernicus University, which was conducted at Skinakas Observatory in Crete, Greece. The IAA-CSIC coauthors acknowledge financial support from the Spanish "Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación" (MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033) through the Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-CSIC (CEX2021-001131-S) and grants PID2019-107847RB-C44 and PID2022-139117NB-C44. Some of the data are based on observations collected at the Observatorio de Sierra Nevada, owned and operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC). Further data are based on observations collected at the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA), operated jointly by Junta de Andalucía and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IAA-CSIC). The POLAMI observations were carried out at the IRAM 30 m telescope. IRAM is supported by INSU/CNRS (France), MPG (Germany), and IGN (Spain). The data in this study include observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, owned in collaboration by the University of Turku and Aarhus University and operated jointly by Aarhus University, the University of Turku, and the University of Oslo, representing Denmark, Finland, and Norway; the University of Iceland; and Stockholm University at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. The data presented here were obtained in part with ALFOSC, which is provided by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA) under a joint agreement with the University of Copenhagen and NOT. E.L. was supported by Academy of Finland projects 317636 and 320045. This study was based in part on observations conducted using the Perkins Telescope Observatory (PTO) in Arizona, USA, which is owned and operated by Boston University. We acknowledge funding to support our NOT observations from the Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), University of Turku, Finland (Academy of Finland grant No. 306531). Part of the French contribution is supported by the Scientific Research National Center (CNRS) and the French Spatial Agency (CNES). D.B., S.K., R.S., and N.M. acknowledge support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 771282. C.C. acknowledges support by the European Research Council (ERC) under the HORIZON ERC grants 2021 program under grant agreement No. 101040021.

The VLBA is an instrument of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. This work was supported by JST, the establishment of university fellowships toward the creation of science technology innovation, grant No. JPMJFS2129. This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI grant No. JP21H01137. This work was also partially supported by the Optical and Near-Infrared Astronomy Inter-University Cooperation Program from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan. We are grateful to the observation and operating members of the Kanata Telescope. The Submillimeter Array is a joint project between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics and is funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the Academia Sinica. Maunakea, the location of the SMA, is a culturally important site for the indigenous Hawaiian people; we are privileged to study the cosmos from its summit.

Facilities

CAO - , IRAM-30m - , IXPE - , KANATA - , NOT - Nordic Optical Telescope, Perkins - Lowell Observatory's 72in Perkins Telescope, SNO - , Skinakas - , SMA - SubMillimeter Array, VLBA - Very Long Baseline Array, Swift-XRT - , XMM-Newton -

Software References

astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018, 2022), Sherpa (Freeman et al. 2001), Xspec (Arnaud 1996), ixpeobssim (Baldini et al. 2022a, 2022b), HEASoft (NASA High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) 2014), SAS (Gabriel et al. 2004)