First NuSTAR Observations of the BL Lac-type Blazar PKS 2155-304: Constraints on the Jet Content and Distribution of Radiating Particles

Abstract

We report the first hard X-ray observations with NuSTAR of the BL Lac-type blazar PKS 2155-304, augmented with soft X-ray data from XMM-Newton and γ-ray data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope, obtained in 2013 April when the source was in a very low flux state. A joint NuSTAR and XMM spectrum, covering the energy range 0.5-60 keV, is best described by a model consisting of a log-parabola component with curvature β = 0.3(-0.1,+0.2) and a (local) photon index 3.04 ± 0.15 at photon energy of 2 keV, and a hard power-law tail with photon index 2.2 ± 0.4. The hard X-ray tail can be smoothly joined to the quasi-simultaneous γ-ray spectrum by a synchrotron self-Compton component produced by an electron distribution with index p = 2.2. Assuming that the power-law electron distribution extends down to γ_min = 1 and that there is one proton per electron, an unrealistically high total jet power of L_p ∼ 10^47 erg s^-1 is inferred. This can be reduced by two orders of magnitude either by considering a significant presence of electron-positron pairs with lepton-to-proton ratio n_e+_e-/n_p ∼ 30, or by introducing an additional, low-energy break in the electron energy distribution at the electron Lorentz factor γ_br1 ∼ 100. In either case, the jet composition is expected to be strongly matter-dominated.