# Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155-304

## 1 Introduction

BL Lacertae objects represent a subclass of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs), emitting non-thermal radiation from radio to gamma-rays, even up to TeV energies. A defining property of BL Lac objects is that the radiation is strongly variable from radio to gamma-rays on different timescales. The mechanisms responsible for the non-thermal emission over such a wide energy range are commonly believed to be synchrotron and inverse Compton scattering from plasma in a relativistic jet oriented at a small angle with respect to the line of sight.

PKS 2155$``$304 is the brightest BL Lac object at UV wavelengths and one of the brightest in the X-ray band. It was detected in gamma-rays by the EGRET experiment on CGRO (Vestrand, Stacy & Sreekumar 1995; Sreekumar & Vestrand 1997), and it is one of the few BL Lacs observed at TeV energies (Chadwick et al. 1999). Its broad band spectrum shows two peaks: the first one is synchrotron emission peaking at UV and/or soft X-rays as most X-ray selected BL Lac objects (High frequency peak BL Lac objects , HBLs; Padovani & Giommi 1995). The other one is around the gamma-ray region and it is attributed to Compton scattering by the same high energy electrons which are radiating via synchrotron. It has a very hard gamma-ray spectrum in the 0.1$``$10 GeV region, with a power-law spectral index of $`\alpha _\gamma 0.71`$ (Vestrand et al. 1995), and a time-averaged integral flux of $`4.2\times 10^{11}`$ erg $`\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ above 300 GeV (Chadwick et al. 1999).

PKS 2155$``$304 has been one of the best targets of multiwavelength campaigns because of its brightness. This kind of study has proved to be a powerful tool to constrain radiation models through the study of correlated variability among different bands. The first multiwavelength campaign was performed, from radio to X-ray wavelengths, in 1991 November, by ROSAT, IUE and ground-based telescopes, and correlated variability was observed between UV and soft X-rays with the UV lagging by $`2`$ hours (Edelson et al. 1995). However, the source showed a definitely different variability behavior in the 1994 May campaign based on IUE, EUVE and ASCA data. Correlated variability was observed with larger amplitude at shorter wavelengths, and significant soft lags, i.e. the UV lagging the EUV by 1 day, and the EUV in turn lagging the X-rays by 1 day (Urry et al. 1997).

Variability can be characterized by the power density spectrum (PDS hereafter) and inter-band correlations: the PDS slopes and the measured time lags impose strong constraints on radiation models. The three long duration and high time resolution observations by BeppoSAX and ASCA are rather suitable to carry on temporal studies. In the present paper we perform detailed timing analysis for these observations, and compare the results. Preliminary cross correlation analysis with Monte Carlo simulations were firstly reported in Treves et al. (1999).

We briefly summarize the observations in section 2; the light curves and variability analysis are presented in section 3, followed by the PDS analysis in section 4; in section 5 we carry out comprehensive cross-correlation analysis with detailed Monte Carlo simulations to determine the uncertainties on inter-band lags. The physical implications of the results are discussed in section 6 and conclusions are drawn in the final section 7.

## 2 Observations

The BeppoSAX payload (Boella et al. 1997a) consists of four Narrow Field Instruments (NFIs) which point in the same direction, namely one Low Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (LECS) sensitive in the 0.1$``$10 keV range (Parmar et al. 1997), and three identical Medium Energy Concentrator Spectrometers (MECS) sensitive in 1.5$``$10 keV band (Boella et al. 1997b). Both the LECS and MECS detectors are Gas Scintillation Proportional Counters (GSPC) and are in the focus of the four identical X-ray telescopes. There are two more collimated instruments: the High Pressure Gas Scintillation Proportional Counter (HPGSPC) (Manzo et al. 1997) and the Phoswich Detector System (Frontera et al. 1997), which are not however suitable to perform temporal analysis because of the high background and limited statistics on a source like PKS 2155$``$304. Therefore, for the following timing analysis, only LECS and MECS data are used.

BeppoSAX NFIs observed PKS 2155$``$304 for more than 2 days during the Performance Verification phase on 20-22 November 1996 (SAX96), and for slightly less than 1.5 days during our AO1 observation from 22 to 24 November 1997 (SAX97). The effective exposure times for MECS and LECS were 63 ks and 22 ks for SAX97, and 108 ks and 36 ks for SAX96, respectively. BeppoSAX data reduction procedure is described in detail by Chiappetti et al. (1999). The light curves were firstly presented by Giommi et al. (1998) and Chiappetti et al. (1999). In particular in the latter work the presence of a soft lag of about 10<sup>3</sup> s and a tendency of the amplitude of variability to increase with energy have been found in the SAX97 data.

PKS 2155$``$304 was also monitored by the ASCA satellite for more than two days from 19 to 21 May 1994 (ASCA94) coordinated with a multiwavelength monitoring from radio to X-rays (Pesce et al. 1997; Pian et al. 1997; Urry et al. 1997). ASCA includes two SIS and two GIS focal-plane detectors (Tanaka, Inoue, & Holt 1994). The X-ray light curve considered here – retrieved from the archive – was taken from the GIS detectors. Preliminary results were presented by Makino et al. (1996).

In this paper we will perform detailed temporal analysis of the different observations and compare the relative results. The log of the three observations is shown in Table 1.

## 3 Variability Analysis

We analyze the light curves with the timing analysis software package XRONOS (Stella & Angelini 1993). Unless otherwise specified, we a priori separate the energy ranges into the following three bands: (1) 0.1$``$1.5 keV as soft energy band referred to as LE band; (2) 1.5$``$3.5 keV as the first medium X-ray band which we refer to as ME1 band; (3) 3.5$``$10 keV as the second medium energy band, i.e. ME2 band. Note that the LE band of the ASCA observation is 0.5$``$1.5 keV.

The light curves binned over 1000 or 2000s are shown in Figures 1,2 and 3 for the SAX97, SAX96 and ASCA94, respectively. We compute the hardness ratios (HR) of ME1 to LE (HR1) and of ME2 to ME1 (HR2), which are also presented in the same figures.

### 3.1 Variability parameters

In order to quantify the variability properties, here we summarize the general definition of the fractional $`rms`$ variability parameter $`F_{var}`$ (e.g. Rodríguez-Pascual et al. 1997). The data series $`F_i(t)`$ of the light curve has a standard deviation $`\sigma _F^2=\frac{1}{N1}_{i=1}^N(F_i(t)\overline{F})^2`$, where $`\overline{F}`$ is the mean count rate. In addition, we define the expected variance, due to random errors $`\sigma _i(t)`$ associated with $`F_i(t)`$, as $`\mathrm{\Delta }_F^2=\frac{1}{N}_{i=1}^N\sigma _i^2(t)`$. The excess variance, $`\sigma _{exc}`$, is then defined as the difference between the standard deviation $`\sigma _F^2`$ and the expected variance $`\mathrm{\Delta }_F^2`$, i.e. $`\sigma _{exc}^2=\sigma _F^2\mathrm{\Delta }_F^2`$, from which we can define the fractional $`rms`$ variability parameter as $`F_{var}=\sigma _{exc}/\overline{F}`$.

The above parameters only characterize the mean variability of a source. However, a direct measurement of the fastest timescale on which the intensity can change is crucial as it may constrain the source size, and thus luminosity density, accretion efficiency or beaming parameters, and black hole mass. This requires to identify rapid variability events rather than the average variability properties. One often considers the so-called “doubling time” as a reasonable measure of the fastest and meaningful timescale of a source (e.g. Edelson 1992). More precisely, here we define the “doubling time” as $`T_2=|\frac{F\mathrm{\Delta }T}{\mathrm{\Delta }F}|`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }T=T_jT_i`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }F=F_jF_i`$, and $`F=(F_j+F_i)/2`$, and consider the minimum value of $`T_2^{ij}`$ over any data pairs as the shortest timescale for each observation, keeping in mind that this quantity is ill-defined, strongly depending on sampling rate, length and signal-to-noise ratio of the observation (Press 1978). The error on $`T_2^{ij}`$ is propagated through the errors on the fluxes $`F_i`$ and $`F_j`$, and a priori we neglect the value of $`T_2^{ij}`$ if the error is larger than $`20\%`$.

The variability parameters defined above are reported in Table 2.

### 3.2 Results

#### 3.2.1 SAX97

Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304 presents the light curves and hardness ratios. At the beginning of the observation PKS 2155$``$304 exhibited a large flare, with a variation by a factor $`4`$, followed by two other events of smaller amplitude. The second flare presents similar rising and declining timescales. As shown in Table 2, the variability amplitude is to some extent different in the three bands, increasing with increasing energy ($`F_{var}`$ is 0.22, 0.27 and 0.30 in the LE, ME1 and ME2 bands, respectively). No variations on timescales of less than $``$ 1 hour are found. The most rapid variation event – the fastest among the three observations – occurred during the first flare, with minimum values of $`T_2`$ of about 3.4, 1.9 and 1.8 hours in LE, ME1 and ME2 bands, respectively. We notice that these timescales are much shorter and the fluxes about $`50\%`$ higher than those of SAX96 (see Table 2), indicating faster variability with higher intensity.

From the last two panels of Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304, one can see that the HR1 presents a global trend similar to that of the intensities (see Chiappetti et al. 1999 for more details). However, no statistically significant correlation seems to be present, as HR1 has the same value during the first two peaks which have significantly different intensities and is smaller during the end of the observation, although the average intensity is similar to that of the second peak. HR2 does not show any trend.

#### 3.2.2 SAX96

As shown in Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304, an approximately symmetric flare was seen in the middle of the observation, which is well resolved with similar rising and decaying time scales. A flare of lower intensity is visible at the beginning, while a larger flare probably occurred towards the end of the observation, although the observation is incomplete. Some small-amplitude variability is also detected.

The $`F_{var}`$ are comparable for the ME1 and ME2 bands ($`0.13`$), and are $`30\%`$ larger than that relative to the LE band. The estimated “doubling times” are about 22, 14 and 8 hours for the LE, ME1 and ME2 bands, respectively. From Figures 1,2 and Table 2, it is clear that during SAX96 PKS 2155$``$304 was in a relatively faint state with smaller amplitude and longer timescale variability, compared to SAX97.

The hardness ratio HR1 shows a behavior similar to that of the light curves, in the sense that the spectrum is harder at higher intensities, while again HR2 does not follow any trend (see Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304).

#### 3.2.3 ASCA94

The light curves and hardness ratios relative to this observation are plotted in Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304. A large amplitude flare, with an approximately symmetric shape, is clearly seen at the beginning of the observation although the rising portion of the event is not fully sampled. PKS 2155$``$304 was more variable in this period than during the other two observations, as can be seen from $`F_{var}`$ (Table 2), with a flux intermediate between SAX97 and SAX96. The estimated “doubling times” are about 5.6, 4.8, and 4.5 hours in the LE, ME1 and ME2 bands, respectively.

A significant characteristic of ASCA94 is that the hardness ratios present a trend of linear decrease over the whole period, which is a general signature that the spectra become softer when the source is fainter. Urry et al. (1997) showed the same trend through the spectral fits.

## 4 PDS Analysis

AGN variability can be statistically characterized by its PDS. The PDS of very few Seyfert galaxies and PKS 2155$``$304 generally behave as power laws, proportional to $`f^\alpha `$ over some temporal frequency range, where $`f`$ is the temporal frequency (e.g. Edelson & Nandra 1999; Hayashida et al. 1998; Tagliaferri et al. 1991). For PKS 2155$``$304, the durations of the observations considered here are much longer ($`2`$ days) than previous ones (e.g. EXOSAT), allowing us to determine the PDS over a range extending towards relatively lower frequencies. Because of low exposure efficiency of the LECS ($`20\%`$), here we focus on the BeppoSAX MECS and ASCA light curves in the 1.5$``$10 keV region.

The PDS analysis is carried out with the direct Fourier transform algorithm which is included in the timing series analysis package XRONOS. For these observations, the PDS is calculated for the background-subtracted light curves with 10s time resolution, as each PDS in our cases approaches (white) noise level before $`10^2`$ Hz, clearly smaller than the Nyquist frequency of $`5\times 10^2`$ Hz at 10s bin size. The average count rate is subtracted from the bins before the PDS is calculated. In order to improve the signal-to-noise and study the mean variability properties of PKS 2155$``$304, the light curves are divided into several short intervals with each interval sampling 4096 points. The SAX97 light curve presents 3 good intervals; the SAX96 light curve has 4 good intervals, while we neglect the last part of the light curve which contains a long interruption towards the end of the observation; the ASCA94 observation is divided into 4 good intervals. For each light curve, the power spectra from each interval are then averaged.

An important issue, discussed in detail by Tagliaferri et al. (1991), is the data gap filling, which is unavoidable for a low orbit X-ray satellite. The gap-filling procedure could strongly affect the derived PDS slope, artificially increasing the power at high frequencies and introducing spurious quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) (Tagliaferri et al. 1996). In order to decrease the effect of data gaps in determining the PDS, we adopt the gap filling procedure defined as “running mean gap filling” in XRONOS. This method replaces the data gaps with the moving average of the light curve calculated in our cases over a duration of about 1.5 hour. In this way, the gaps are bridged in a smooth way, which not only simulates real events but also reduces the bias introduced by the window function. We also determined a posteriori, by considering a somewhat different duration (e.g. 2 hours), that the slope of the PDS is rather insensitive to the filling duration over which the running mean is calculated. This indicates that the running mean could follow the light curve behavior on time scales of hours as long as the gap filling duration is substantially shorter than the whole interval and longer than the data gaps, so that the gap center could be “linked” with the running mean from a relatively high number of points and the statistical fluctuations are reduced.

The average PDS (after average noise subtraction) obtained in this way from each individual observation are shown in Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304a,b,c for SAX97, 96 and ASCA94 light curves, respectively. These are rebinned in logarithmic intervals of 0.18 (factor 1.5) to reduce the noise and allow the estimation of error bars. This means that the first point is still the lowest frequency point, but the second point is derived by averaging the next two points, etc. In such a way the PDS appear nearly equi-spaced in a log-log diagram. Each PDS is normalized so that its integral gives the squared $`rms`$ fractional variability $`F_{var}`$ (therefore the power spectrum is in unit of $`\mathrm{F}_{\mathrm{𝑣𝑎𝑟}}^2/\mathrm{Hz}`$), which is normalized to the squared average count rate. The expected (white) noise power level must be subtracted to obtain the $`F_{var}`$ of the light curve (this level is about 1.5, 1.6 and 1.2 for SAX97, 96 and ASCA94 data, respectively). The error bars represent the standard deviation of the average power in each rebinned frequency interval, where the power in each bin is $`\chi ^2`$ distributed with $`2N`$ degrees of freedom, where $`N=ML`$ is the total number of points used to produce the mean power in each frequency bin (from $`M`$ intervals and $`L`$ independent Fourier frequencies).

From Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304, one can see that each PDS shows a strong red noise spectral component which decreases with increasing frequencies, without any significant narrow feature that would be indicative of periodic or quasi-periodic variability. This component approaches the noise level at $`6\times 10^3`$ Hz for the SAX97, 96 light curves, and at $`1\times 10^3`$ Hz for the ASCA94 data set. In addition, we note some differences among the three PDS. The SAX97 PDS clearly shows more power than the SAX96 one at lower frequencies, indicating a flatter PDS for SAX96 (this is easy to reconcile with the fact that $`F_{var}`$ of SAX96 ($`0.13`$) is much less than that of SAX97 ($`F_{var}0.3`$)). The ASCA94 PDS has much less power than that of SAX97 over the whole range of temporal frequencies considered here, consistent with the fact that the ASCA94 PDS approaches the noise level at relatively lower frequencies. However, this does not agree with their corresponding $`F_{var}`$ values. Let us consider the origin of this discrepancy. The SAX97, 96 light curves show more or less identical amplitude of variability over the whole observations, i.e. similar $`F_{var}`$ for each interval, while the ASCA94 light curve does not present pronounced variability after the large flare at the beginning of the observation. Thus $`F_{var}`$ for the ASCA94 dataset significantly changes from one interval to another, being about 0.23 and 0.11 for the flare and (almost) constant flux intervals of the ASCA94 light curve, respectively, but 0.35 when calculated over the whole duration. This makes the ASCA94 data set more variable if we consider it as a whole. For this reason we firstly compute the PDS in different intervals and normalized it so that the integral gives its own squared $`F_{var}`$ value, and then obtained the average PDS by averaging the power spectra from each interval. Because the light curve of ASCA94 is characterized by different $`F_{var}`$, we should use a mean value averaged from the (four) intervals considered in deriving the average PDS. This average $`F_{var}`$, which is much smaller than those of the SAX97, 96 light curves, indeed well agrees with the average PDS. Note that instead, for the SAX97 and SAX96 light curves , the average $`F_{var}`$ from each interval is identical to that of the whole observation.

In order to quantify the slope of the PDS, power law model is fitted to each average power spectrum in the frequency interval $`6\times 10^5`$ to $`6\times 10^3`$ (SAX97, SAX96) or to $`1.5\times 10^3`$ Hz (ASCA94). The lowest frequency point of each PDS was ignored because they tend to be more noisy, and also for comparison with previous PDS analysis. The best-fit power law slopes are $`2.2,1.5`$ and 2.2 for SAX97, 96 and ASCA94 PDS, respectively. We also compute in the same way the average PDS after the removal of a linear trend from the light curves, in which the power law slopes for the “de–trended” PDS are consistent with the above values within $`1\sigma `$, respectively. The fitting details are shown in Table 3.

## 5 Cross Correlation Analysis

The first clear result visible from the light curves is that the variations in the different X-ray bands are all correlated. Indeed, these intensive monitorings with high time resolution and long duration allow detailed measurements of the inter-band cross correlation properties, and in particular to make quantitative estimates of the degree of correlation and of any lags between variations at different X-ray wavelengths. Two cross correlation methods, namely the Discrete Correlation Function (DCF) and Modified Mean Deviation (MMD), are applied. In the following, a positive lag indicates the higher energy X-rays leading the lower energy ones, while negative indicates the opposite.

### 5.1 Cross Correlation Analysis Technique

#### 5.1.1 DCF

The DCF is analogous to the classical correlation function (e.g. Press et al. 1992) except it can work with unevenly sampled data. The DCF technique was described in detail by Edelson & Krolik (1988) and applied to PKS 2155$``$304 by Edelson et al. (1995) and Urry et al. (1997) to measure the time lags between UV and X-ray during the two multiwavelength campaigns mentioned above. Here we bin the original light curves and fix the DCF resolution according to the following criteria: (1) the bin sizes in both the light curves and the DCF should be at least 3 times smaller than any possible lag; (2)the bin size should also be as large as possible to reduce the error on the DCF. The resulting DCFs, only for the LE/ME2 case, are shown in Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304a,c,e (left panels) for the three observations, respectively. In order to quantify any time lag, we fit the DCF with a Gaussian function plus a constant, and take the Gaussian centroid, rather than the DCF peak, as the lag between the two energy bands (see arguments by Edelson et al. 1995 and Peterson et al. 1998). The two main advantages of this are: (1) the Gaussian fit takes into account the overall symmetry of the cross-correlation distribution around the peak, reducing the possibility of spurious lags due to a particular DCF point that could originate from statistical errors; (2) we found that – under the two conditions mentioned above – the lag and its uncertainty derived from a Gaussian fit are insensitive to the bin sizes of both the light curves and the DCF. The Gaussian fits to the DCFs are also shown in the same figures, and Table 4 reports the fitting results for the LE/ME1, ME1/ME2 and LE/ME2 cases. It should be noted that a Gaussian fit – although representative of the peak position and dispersion for both the DCF and MMD – does not necessarily provide a statistically adequate fit to these functions.

#### 5.1.2 MMD

In order to check the results suggested by the DCF technique, we perform a similar analysis by using the MMD method introduced by Hufnagel & Bregman (1992). The MMD considers the mean deviation of the two cross correlated time series as the correlation estimator and the minimum value of the MMD should correspond to the best correlation point (lag). Thus, unlike the DCF, it cannot be used to estimate the significance of the correlation between different wavelengths. As with the DCF, we take the centroid of a Gaussian fit as the measured lag. The MMD results with their Gaussian fits, only for the LE/ME2 case, are shown in Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304b,d,f (right hand panels), and the results of the fits are reported in Table 4 for the LE/ME1, ME1/ME2 and LE/ME2 cases.

### 5.2 Monte Carlo Simulations

As suggested by Peterson et al. (1998), the uncertainty on the cross-correlation lag are dependent on both the flux uncertainties in individual measurements and the observational sampling uncertainties of the light curves. So, the statistical significance of the detection of a lag can not be assessed just by a cross-correlation analysis. In order to test the dependence of our findings on photon statistics, in this section we apply to our data the model-independent Monte Carlo simulation method introduced by Peterson et al. (1998). Because of the uncertainties just mentioned, the method considers “flux randomization” (FR) and “random subset selection” (RSS). FR assumes that the errors on fluxes resulting from the total photon number in a bin (several hundred photons in our cases) are normally distributed. Thus FR just takes each real flux $`F_i`$ and modifies it by adding a random Gaussian deviation based on the quoted error $`\sigma _i`$ for each data point of the light curves. So, the modification of each data point is statistically independent of each of the others, and therefore the dependence of lags on flux errors can be easily assessed through the FR simulations. RSS tests instead the sensitivity of a cross correlation lag by considering only subsets of the original light curves with no dependence on previous selection but still preserving the temporal order of the data points. The probability of random removal of any data point is $`1/e0.37`$ which is a Poisson probability. Thus each RSS realization is based on a randomly selected subset which is typically $`37\%`$ smaller than the real data set. Peterson et al. (1998) argue that RSS gives a fairly conservative estimate of the uncertainties due to sampling. We thus take the combination of FR and RSS in a single simulation to test together the sensitivity of the cross-correlation lags on flux uncertainties and sampling characteristics. We apply the DCF and the MMD to each FR/RSS Monte Carlo realization to determine individual lags obtained from the centroid of the Gaussian fit to each independent realization. The same process is repeated 2000 times to build up a cross-correlation peak distribution (CCPD; Maoz & Netzer 1989), which is not necessarily a normal distribution (e.g. Peterson et al. 1998). The CCPDs for the three observations are displayed in Figures 6$``$8 (their different widths result from the different photon statistics), respectively. From the CCPD we can determine the probability that a given lag falls in some particular likelihood range. In our cases (2000 realizations), we determine the lower (upper) extrema of the $`68\%`$ and $`90\%`$ confidence ranges by taking the 320th (1680th) and 100th (1900th) smallest values from all realizations, respectively. The results of the simulations are shown in Table 5. In addition, we tested that the results are insensitive to the bin sizes of both the light curves and the cross-correlation.

In Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304 the lags derived from the DCF/MMD methods directly and through the simulations are compared: indeed they are fully consistent within the uncertainties estimated from the FR/RSS simulations.

### 5.3 Results

#### 5.3.1 SAX97

We remind that during SAX97 the source was in a relatively high state compared to SAX96, and variability was more pronounced. The inter-band correlation coefficients $`r_0`$ (see Table 4) indicate that the X-rays in different bands are highly correlated. The cross correlation analysis show a very short soft lag between the LE and ME2 bands ($``$ 1000 s), while the lags for LE/ME1 and ME1/ME2 are consistent with zero (see Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304(a,b) and Table 4). The FR/RSS Monte Carlo simulations confirm these findings with high significance (see Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304 and Table 5).

#### 5.3.2 SAX96

The values of $`r_0`$ derived for LE/ME1, ME1/ME2 and LE/ME2 correlations (see Table 4) suggest that the light curves are also strongly correlated during this relatively faint state. However, in contrast to SAX97, we find significant soft X-ray lags relative to higher energy X-rays. It is apparent from Figures Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304(c,d), and Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304 and Tables 4,5 that the lags estimated with the DCF and MMD methods are compatible within the uncertainties of the FR/RSS Monte Carlo simulations, indicating the presence of a soft positive lag of $`4`$ hours between the LE and ME2 bands. Soft lags of about $`2`$ hours are also shown by the LE/ME1 and ME1/ME2 cross correlation functions. Note also that the soft X-ray lags in this case are the largest recorded so far for BL Lac objects in the X-rays.

#### 5.3.3 ASCA94

The state of the source during the ASCA94 observation is intermediate among the two $`Beppo`$SAX observations. Also these data show strong correlations among the different bands (see Table 4). The DCF and MMD analysis (see Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304(e,f) and Table 4) reveal soft lags intermediate between those of the SAX97 and SAX96 data sets: the LE lags the ME2 by about $`0.8`$ hours, while LE lags ME1 and ME1 lags ME2 by $``$ 0.4 hours. These results are also confirmed by the FR/RSS Monte Carlo simulations (see Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304 and Table 5).

#### 5.3.4 Comparisons

The results from the three observations corresponding to different intensity states of PKS 2155$``$304 suggest that the soft time lags are variable and possibly related to the source intensity, the soft lag becoming larger when the source is fainter. We illustrate this behavior in Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304a, where the lags between LE and ME2 are plotted against the mean fluxes in the ME2 band. A similar behavior is also present between the lags and the ratios of the maximum to the minimum count rate (see Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304b). As a comparison, in Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304c, we include the upper limit to the soft lag between the 0.1$``$2 and the 3$``$6 keV bands obtained from the EXOSAT observation of 24 Oct 1985 (Tagliaferri et al. 1991). This figure shows a power law relation (logarithmic axis) between the lags and the fluxes. This suggestive trend might give crucial clues on the emission processes and physical parameters in PKS 2155$``$304, and strongly requires the comparison with the results of time-dependent emission models.

We also notice that the lags ($`\tau `$) are qualitatively anti-correlated with the correlation coefficients ($`r_0`$) between the different energy bands. From Table 4, it can be seen that the $`r_0`$ of SAX97 and ASCA94 are significantly higher than those of SAX96. On the contrary, the soft lags of SAX97 and ASCA94 are smaller than those of SAX96. This anti-correlation is indeed expected. If obvious soft lags were present, the maximum amplitude of the cross correlation function would be significantly shifted away from the zero lag point and thus the standard correlation coefficient $`r_0`$ would obviously decrease if the cross correlation function were a smooth Gaussian function (but not necessarily). Therefore, variable lags in different states are qualitatively suggested by the variable correlation degrees without any measured time shift. This behavior occurs also between the $`\tau `$ and $`r_0`$ within the different inter-band correlations (for example, the lags become larger with $`r_0`$ becoming smaller in SAX96).

Interestingly, variations of the soft lags found here in the X-ray bands are reminiscent of the variations of the UV lags with respect to the X-ray (from $`2`$ hours to $`2`$ days) between the 1991 and 1994 intensity states of this same source (see Introduction).

## 6 Discussion

The high degree of correlation and time lags between variations at different wavelengths provide strong constraints on the physical parameters of blazars. The previous multiwavelength monitoring campaigns of PKS 2155$``$304 found different variability behaviors (Edelson et al. 1995; Urry et al. 1997). In particular, the 1991 campaign showed the soft X-ray leading the UV by just $`2`$ hours (the result of the cross correlation analysis was recently confirmed by Peterson et al. (1998) on the basis of simulations similar to those used in this paper). However, during the 1994 campaign the UV lagged the X-ray by $`2`$ days. Time lags of the soft compared to the hard X-rays were suggested by the ASCA observations of PKS 2155$``$304 and MKN 421 (Makino et al. 1996; Takahashi et al. 1996), while EXOSAT observations of PKS 2155$``$304 showed no evidence of lags, with upper limits of a few hundred seconds (Tagliaferri et al. 1991).

In order to interpret the inter-band variable time lags, the development of time dependent models taking into account the effects of particle injection/acceleration, cooling and diffusion would be required. However, the time dependent problem is in general very complicated and only some simplified and specific cases have been considered so far. Mastichiadis & Kirk (1997) showed that, within the assumptions of an homogeneous SSC model, an increase in the maximum energy of the injected electron population can reproduce the rapid X-ray flares as well as the spectral evolution of blazars like MKN 421. Interestingly, they also show that these features cannot be due to changes of both the magnetic field and the amount of injected electrons. In addition, Chiaberge & Ghisellini (1999) pointed out the importance, for both spectral evolution and time lags, of delays due to light crossing the radiating region. This effect is superposed to the wavelength dependent timescales due to the different cooling times of radiating electrons. In contrast to the above studies, Georganopoulos & Marscher (1998) modelled, using a time-dependent inhomogeneous accelerating jet model, the evolution of flares during the two multiwavelength campaigns on PKS 2155$``$304 . Within this scenario, the different variability features could be reproduced by assuming that plasma disturbances with different physical properties occur in an underlying jet characterized by the same physical parameters. The small time lag between the UV and X-ray bands in the 1991 November campaign would indicate quasi-co-spatiality of the regions radiating at these frequencies, assuming an injected electron distribution similar to that characterizing the underlying jet emission. However, the clear time lag between these same bands in the 1994 May campaign are interpreted as an indication of spatial separation of the emitting regions. The separation can be due to the propagation downstream of the electrons while progressively radiating at lower frequencies. This however also requires the injected electrons to be narrower in energy than during the 1991 November event.

Clearly, in order to pin down the origin and nature of variations, both systematic observational trends and a thorough analysis with the different models are needed. In this work, we have concentrated on the first aspect, but let us examine the simplest (and analytical) considerations one can draw from the observational results.

Obviously, the homogeneous synchrotron self–Compton model is the simplest interpretation for the X-ray emission and overall spectral energy distribution (SED) of PKS 2155$``$304 (e.g. Chiappetti et al. 1999). According to this picture a quasi-stationary population of particles is responsible for a “quiescent” flux level, while flares result from a uniform injection and/or acceleration of relativistic electrons over a time interval $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$. The evolution of the particle distribution is governed by the radiative cooling through synchrotron emission which dominates in the X-ray band. As the radiative losses are energy dependent, that is, radiative lifetime of electrons is inversely proportional to the emitted frequency, low energy photons are expected to lag high energy ones (e.g. Urry et al. 1997; Takahashi et al. 1996). In particular, within this simple scenario, it is possible to relate the observed time lag to the physical parameters of the source (see also Tavecchio, Maraschi & Ghisellini 1998), and in the observer’s frame this can be expressed as

$$B\delta ^{1/3}=223.5\left(\frac{1+z}{E_l}\right)^{1/3}\left[\frac{1(E_l/E_h)^{1/2}}{\tau _{obs}}\right]^{2/3}(G)$$

where $`E_l`$ and $`E_h`$ refer to the low and high X-ray energies (in units of keV), and $`\tau _{obs}`$ (sec) is the observed lag between $`E_l`$ and $`E_h`$ photons. Under the synchrotron cooling assumption, the observed time lag $`\tau _{obs}`$ depends only on the magnetic field intensity $`B`$ and the bulk Doppler factor $`\delta `$ of the radiating region. If we take $`E_l`$ as 0.8 keV, $`E_h`$ as 7 keV, and $`\tau _{obs}=4.0,0.8`$, and $`0.4`$ hours for each of the observations, our results would imply $`B\delta ^{1/3}`$ $``$ 0.32, 0.94 and 1.49 $`G`$ for SAX96, ASCA94 and SAX97, respectively. Interestingly, Chiappetti et al. (1999) found that the model parameters derived through the fitting of the broad band spectrum during the SAX97 observation are consistent with those estimated from the observed soft lag.

A further piece of information is given by the trend between observed soft time lags and fluxes (see Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304). If we for example assume that $`\delta `$ has not changed, the simplest scenario would suggest that $`B`$ varied by a factor $``$ 5 from SAX96 to SAX97. Although qualitatively consistent with the variation in the flux, this can not quantitatively reproduce the observed correlation. In fact, under the (simplistic) assumptions of variations occurring only in the magnetic field, one would expect $`FB^{1+\alpha _x}`$ and $`B\delta ^{1/3}\tau _{obs}^{\frac{2}{3}}`$, thus implying that the relation between intensity and lag is given by $`F\tau _{obs}^{\frac{2(1+\alpha _x)}{3}}`$ (assuming $`\delta `$ constant), where $`\alpha _x`$ is the X-ray spectral index. For $`\alpha _x1.0`$, we have $`F\tau _{obs}^{\frac{4}{3}}`$. For example, the change in the lag by a factor $`10`$ from SAX97 to SAX96 would imply a flux variation of a factor $`22`$. However, the corresponding observed flux just changed by a factor $`1.4`$ in the 0.1$``$1.5 and 3.5$``$10 keV bands. The predicted relation between the lags and the fluxes under this hypothesis is also shown in Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304a,c, where it can be clearly seen this is much flatter than that of the observed one between all of the observations. Therefore, as one might expect, other physical quantities, such as the density and energy spectra of the electron population and/or the Doppler factor, have to vary if the observed relation between flux and lag holds within the homogeneous synchrotron self–Compton scenario.

One more interesting piece of information for PKS 2155$``$304 is given by the good correlation found between variability parameters and source intensity. These have been plotted in Figure Rapid X-ray Variability of the BL Lacertae Object PKS 2155$``$304, as the fractional variability parameter ($`F_{var}`$) and “doubling time” ($`T_2`$) against the source flux in the 1.5$``$10 keV band: as the source gets brighter, the average amplitude of variability is larger, and the fastest variability timescale shorter. Although this is only a suggestive trend - due to the limited statistics - it seems to indicate that the properties characterizing variability are not random: any mechanism(s) invoked to account for (variable) radiative dissipation has to intrinsically produce this behavior. More observations with high time resolution are clearly required to confirm and quantify this trend.

We also (qualitatively) stress that the flux–time lag relationship could be associated with the importance of light crossing effects with respect to the cooling timescales. A more intense flux could be associated with relatively efficient dissipation, e.g. occurring at a shock front, which for a quasi–planar geometry (shock-in-jet model, in which a thin shock wave moves down a cylindrically symmetric jet, Marscher & Gear 1985) could imply that light crossing effects do not dominate, and thus small time lags. A low source state, more similar to the quiescent underlying jet emission might be associated with an acceleration/injection of particles in a larger region: due to significant light crossing effects, the observed variability would be smoother and result in larger time lag between different frequencies.

Finally, let us consider the information given by the PDS, which statistically characterizes the variability of a source. It should be noted that with the available data it is not easy to determine through the PDS the typical (or minimum) variability timescale, as the light curves on small time bins becomes very noisy. More powerful techniques, e.g. the structure function, have to be considered. In general, the amplitude of variability decreases as the timescales become shorter. Previous studies, mainly of Seyfert galaxies, show that their PDS can be approximated by power laws with slopes ranging between 1.5 and 2.0 (e.g. McHardy 1999), providing valuable constraints to discriminate among possible models. However, the PDS of BL Lac objects has not yet been well studied in the X-ray band. The best determined PDS has been derived by Tagliaferri et al. (1991) for PKS 2155$``$304 using EXOSAT observations. An average power law slope of $`\alpha 2.5`$ was obtained for the PDS in the 1$``$6 keV band, which however reduced to 1.9 after the removal of the linear trend (as required in that case). Our analysis shows, over the same temporal frequencies, that the slope of the average PDS from each observation is consistent within $`1\sigma `$ with that of the “de–trended” PDS derived from EXOSAT data. The fastest variability time scale inferred from the PDS may reach $`1000s`$, although this is largely uncertain because of the noisy PDS. We note that this time scale is consistent with that estimated from the PDS of the EXOSAT observations (Tagliaferri et al. 1991). Moreover, Paltani (1999) recently determined a similar minimum time scale ($`600s`$) from the EXOSAT data by using the structure function. Interestingly, the most rapid variability estimated from the “doubling time” in the three observations occurred on a similar timescale ($`1`$ hour), at least in SAX97. Of course, longer and uninterrupted X-ray monitoring will be crucial for constraining the PDS of blazars.

## 7 Conclusions

We have considered three long-duration X-ray light curves of PKS 2155$``$304 with high time resolution, and performed detailed time series analysis on them. The intensities in soft and medium X-rays are always well correlated, but with significantly different soft lags, suggesting that variability properties are time dependent and/or different mechanisms responsible for the variability may be at work. The three light curves presented here, which are sampled over short timescales, do not seem to show any direct correspondence with the overall/long term variability properties of the source, as suggested by the two closely similar ROSAT light curves with about 5 years separation discussed by Brinkmann & Siebert (1999).

The most important conclusions presented in this paper can be summarized as follows:

(1) PKS 2155$``$304 shows several well-defined symmetric X-ray flares with similar rising and declining timescales. The amplitude of variability increases with increasing frequency. Very rapid variability events are not found on timescales of less than 1 hour;

(2) the average PDS of SAX97 has significantly more power than those relative to the other two observations, indicating that PKS 2155$``$304 was more variable in this period. In addition, the rapid timescales and average amplitudes of variability may correlate with the source intensity, in the sense that higher brightnesses correspond to shorter timescales and larger amplitudes;

(3) the inter-band X-rays are highly correlated in all cases, but show different soft time lags, possibly correlated with the source intensity. During SAX96 the source was in a relatively low state and showed the longest soft lag ($`4`$ hours) recorded so far at X-ray wavelengths in BL Lac objects. The SAX97 light curves, which correspond to a high state, do not show significant time lag, while the ASCA94 light curves present intermediate time lag;

(4) within the simple homogeneous synchrotron (self–Compton) model for PKS 2155$``$304, the time lags could be interpreted as related to the cooling time scale of the relativistic emitting electrons, although the simplest change in the field intensity cannot quantitatively account for the observed dependence of lag on intensity;

(5) the variability of the (X–ray) inter-band soft time lags of PKS 2155$``$304 is reminiscent of variations of lags between the UV and X-ray bands observed during the 1991 and 1994 multiwavelength campaigns (Edelson et al. 1995; Urry et al. 1997).

The anonymous referee is thanked for constructive comments. YHZ and AC acknowledge the Italian MURST for financial support. This work was partly done in the research network “Accretion onto black holes, compact stars and protostars” funded by the European Commission under contract number ERBFMRX-CT98-0195.