Swift and NuSTAR obs. of the BL Lac Mrk 421

The source exhibited a strong long-term variability in the 0.3-10keV and 3-79keV bands with the maximum-to-minimum daily-binned flux ratios of 22 and 95, respectively, in about 3 months, mainly due to unprecedented strong X-ray outbursts by more than an order of magnitude in both bands within 2 weeks in 2013 April when the 0.3-10keV count rate exceeded the level of 200cts/s for the first time, and Mrk 421 became one of the brightest sources in the X-ray sky.

The source was also very active on intra-day timescales, and it showed flux doubling and halving timescales of 1.16-7.20hr and 1.04-3.54hr, respectively. On some occasions, the flux varied by 4%-23% within 300-840s. During this period, the source also exhibited some of the most extreme X-ray spectral variability ever reported for BL Lacs-the location of the synchrotron spectral energy distribution peak shifted from a few eV to ~10keV, and the photon index at 1 keV and curvature parameter varied on timescales from a few weeks down to intervals shorter than 1ks.