Very-High-Energy $γ$-Ray Observations of the Blazar 1ES 2344+514 with VERITAS
Creators: name: Allen, C.
name: Archambault, S.
name: Archer, A.
name: Benbow, W.
name: Bird, R.
name: Bourbeau, E.
name: Brose, R.
name: Buchovecky, M.
name: Buckley, J. H.
name: Bugaev, V.
name: Cardenzana, J. V
name: Cerruti, M.
name: Chen, X.
name: Christiansen, J. L.
name: Connolly, M. P.
name: Cui, W.
name: Daniel, M. K.
name: Eisch, J. D.
name: Falcone, A.
name: Feng, Q.
name: Fernandez-Alonso, M.
name: Finley, J. P.
name: Fleischhack, H.
name: Flinders, A.
name: Fortson, L.
name: Furniss, A.
name: Gillanders, G. H.
name: Griffin, S.
name: Grube, J.
name: Hütten, M.
name: Håkansson, N.
name: Hanna, D.
name: Hervet, O.
name: Holder, J.
name: Hughes, G.
name: Humensky, T. B.
name: Johnson, C. A.
name: Kaaret, P.
name: Kar, P.
name: Kelley-Hoskins, N.
name: Kertzman, M.
name: Kieda, D.
name: Krause, M.
name: Krennrich, F.
name: Kumar, S.
name: Lang, M. J.
name: Maier, G.
name: McArthur, S.
name: McCann, A.
name: Meagher, K.
name: Moriarty, P.
name: Mukherjee, R.
name: Nguyen, T.
name: Nieto, D.
name: O'Brien, S.
name: de Bhróithe, A. O'Faoláin
name: Ong, R. A.
name: Otte, A. N.
name: Park, N.
name: Petrashyk, A.
name: Pichel, A.
name: Pohl, M.
name: Popkow, A.
name: Pueschel, E.
name: Quinn, J.
name: Ragan, K.
name: Reynolds, P. T.
name: Richards, G. T.
name: Roache, E.
name: Rovero, A. C.
name: Rulten, C.
name: Sadeh, I.
name: Santander, M.
name: Sembroski, G. H.
name: Shahinyan, K.
name: Telezhinsky, I.
name: Tucci, J. V.
name: Tyler, J.
name: Wakely, S. P.
name: Weinstein, A.
name: Wilhelm, A.
name: Williams, D. A.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present very-high-energy $γ$-ray observations of the BL Lac object 1ES 2344+514 taken by the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) between 2007 and 2015. 1ES 2344+514 is detected with a statistical significance above background of $20.8σ$ in $47.2$ hours (livetime) of observations, making this the most comprehensive very-high-energy study of 1ES 2344+514 to date. Using these observations the temporal properties of 1ES 2344+514 are studied on short and long times scales. We fit a constant flux model to nightly- and seasonally-binned light curves and apply a fractional variability test, to determine the stability of the source on different timescales. We reject the constant-flux model for the 2007-2008 and 2014-2015 nightly-binned light curves and for the long-term seasonally-binned light curve at the $&gt; 3σ$ level. The spectra of the time-averaged emission before and after correction for attenuation by the extragalactic background light are obtained. The observed time-averaged spectrum above 200 GeV is satisfactorily fitted (${χ^2/NDF = 7.89/6}$) by a power-law function with index $Γ= 2.46 \pm 0.06_{stat} \pm 0.20_{sys} $ and extends to at least 8 TeV. The extragalactic-background-light-deabsorbed spectrum is adequately fit (${χ^2/NDF = 6.73/6}$) by a power-law function with index $Γ= 2.15 \pm 0.06_{stat} \pm 0.20_{sys} $ while an F-test indicates that the power-law with exponential cutoff function provides a marginally-better fit ($χ^2/NDF $ = $2.56 / 5 $) at the 2.1$σ$ level. The source location is found to be consistent with the published radio location and its spatial extent is consistent with a point source.
description: 7 pages, 2 figures. Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society