Constraining X-ray variability of the blazar 3C 273 using XMM-Newton observations over two decades

Abstract

Blazars exhibit relentless variability across diverse spatial and temporal frequencies. The study of long- and short-term variability properties observed in the X-ray band provides insights into the inner workings of the central engine. In this work, we present timing and spectral analyses of the blazar 3C 273 using the X-ray observations from the $\textit{XMM-Newton}$ telescope covering the period from 2000 to 2020. The methods of timing analyses include estimation of fractional variability, long- and short-term flux distribution, rms-flux relation, and power spectral density analysis. The spectral analysis include estimating a model independent flux hardness ratio and fitting the observations with multiplicative and additive spectral models such as \textit{power-law}, \textit{log-parabola}, \textit{broken power-law}, and \textit{black body}. The \textit{black body} represents the thermal emission from the accretion disk, while the other models represent the possible energy distributions of the particles emitting synchrotron radiation in the jet. During the past two decades, the source flux changed by of a factor of three, with a considerable fractional variability of 27\%. However, the intraday variation was found to be moderate. Flux distributions of the individual observations were consistent with a normal or log-normal distribution, while the overall flux distribution including entire observations appear to be rather multi-modal and of a complex shape. The spectral analyses indicate that \textit{log-parabola} added with a \textit{black body} gives the best fit for most of the observations. The results indicate a complex scenario in which the variability can be attributed to the intricate interaction between the disk/corona system and the jet.