2022MNRAS.511.3101P

We present X-ray intraday variability and power spectral density (PSD) analyses of the longest 23 pointed XMM-Newton observations of the blazar 3C 273 that were taken during 2000-2021. These good time intervals contain between 5 and 24.6 h of data. Variability has been estimated in three energy bands: 0.2-2 keV (soft), 2-10 keV (hard), and 0.2-10 keV (total). 9 of the 23 observations exhibited some variability, though no major variations exceeding 5 per cent were detected. Typical time-scales for variability were ∼1 ks. For those variable light curves, we find that a power-law model provides good fits to each PSD, with most of the slopes between -1.7 and -2.8. Although no variations of hardness ratio (HR) could be measured in any individual observation, an anticorrelation in flux and HR is found in long term data that indicates a harder when brighter trend. Our flux and spectral analyses indicate that both particle acceleration and synchrotron cooling processes make an important contribution to the emission from this blazar.