Correlated Multi-Wave Band Variability in the Blazar 3C 279 from 1996 to 2007

By R. Chatterjee, S. Jorstad, A. Marscher, Haruki Oh, I. McHardy, M. Aller, H. Aller, T. Balonek, H. R. Miller, W. Ryle and 5 more. 2008

147 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the results of extensive multi-wave band monitoring of the blazar 3C 279 between 1996 and 2007 at X-ray energies (2-10 keV), optical R band, and 14.5 GHz, as well as imaging with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) at 43 GHz. In all bands the power spectral density corresponds to “red noise” that can be fit by a single power law over the sampled timescales. Variations in flux at all three wave bands are significantly correlated. The time delay between high- and low-frequency bands changes substantially on timescales of years. A major multifrequency flare in 2001 coincided with a swing of the jet toward a more southerly direction, and in general the X-ray flux is modulated by changes in the position angle of the jet near the core. The flux density in the core at 43 GHz—increases in which indicate the appearance of new superluminal knots—are significantly correlated with the X-ray flux. We decompose the X-ray and optical light curves into individual flares, finding that X-ray leads optical variations (XO) in six flares, the reverse (OX) occurs in three flares, and there is essentially zero lag in four flares. Upon comparing theoretical expectations with the data, we conclude that (1) XO flares can be explained by gradual acceleration of radiating electrons to the highest energies, (2) OX flares can result from either light-travel delays of the seed photons (synchrotron self-Compton scattering) or gradients in maximum electron energy behind shock fronts, and (3) events with similar X-ray and optical radiative energy output originate well upstream of the 43 GHz core, while those in which the optical radiative output dominates occur at or downstream of the core.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a360d3013637d3e7db5dee2fa6468cb79c23ffbe

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Marscher
2. E. Orlando
3. M. Tornikoski
4. A. Lähteenmäki
5. A. Reimer
6. S. Jorstad
7. G. Jóhannesson
8. I. Grenier

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. A. Marscher
2. E. Orlando
3. I. Grenier
4. A. Reimer
5. A. Lähteenmäki
6. M. Tornikoski
7. G. Jóhannesson
8. S. Jorstad

Citations in the corpus

• Photopolarimetric Monitoring of Blazars in the Optical and Near-Infrared Bands with the Kanata Telescope. I. Correlations between Flux, Color, and Polarization (2011, unknown): “In general, variations on time-scales of months–years are expected to have larger amplitudes than those of days– weeks in blazars (Hufnagel, Bregman 1992; Takahashi et al. 2000; Kataoka et al. 2001; Chatterjee et al. 2008).”
• GAMMA-RAY LIGHT CURVES AND VARIABILITY OF BRIGHT FERMI-DETECTED BLAZARS (2010, background): “For this source, Chatterjee et al. (2008) found a slope of 2.3 ± 0.3 for the X-ray band and 1.7 ± 0.3 for the optical.”
• PROBING THE INNER JET OF THE QUASAR PKS 1510−089 WITH MULTI-WAVEBAND MONITORING DURING STRONG GAMMA-RAY ACTIVITY (2010, background): “Long-term multi-waveband monitoring of a number of blazars with these facilities is now providing valuable insights into the physical processes in the jets (e.g., Marscher et al. 2008; Chatterjee et al. 2008; Larionov et al. 2008).”
• A method for the estimation of the significance of cross-correlations in unevenly sampled red-noise time series (2014, methodology): “…in blazars and other AGNs is a simple power-law power spectral density (PSD ∝ 1/νβ ), as has been measured for a small number of sources at various wavelengths (e.g. Hufnagel & Bregman 1992; Edelson et al. 1995; Uttley et al. 2003; Arévalo et al. 2008; Chatterjee et al. 2008; Abdo et al. 2010).”
• TURBULENT, EXTREME MULTI-ZONE MODEL FOR SIMULATING FLUX AND POLARIZATION VARIABILITY IN BLAZARS (2013, methodology): “A subroutine supplied by R. Chatterjee (see Chatterjee et al. 2008), based on the algorithm of Timmer & König (1995), produces 2n random values between −1 and 1 that correspond to a power-law PSD with a slope provided by the user, where n is an integer.”
• LOCATION OF γ-RAY FLARE EMISSION IN THE JET OF THE BL LACERTAE OBJECT OJ287 MORE THAN 14 pc FROM THE CENTRAL ENGINE (2010, methodology): “The solid lines in the next-to-last panel represent fits to the two major 1 mm flares by using the method of Chatterjee et al. (2008).”
• FLARING BEHAVIOR OF THE QUASAR 3C 454.3 ACROSS THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM (2010, methodology): “…intervals because (i) there are significant gaps in X-ray coverage between the intervals, (ii) X-ray measurements at different intervals are obtained with different instruments, and (iii) correlation between X-ray and longer wavelength light curves can change with time (Chatterjee et al. 2008).”
• Kinematics of Parsec-scale Jets of Gamma-Ray Blazars at 43 GHz within the VLBA-BU-BLAZAR Program (2017, background): “These might be associated with knots C4, C2, C1, and A2, respectively, found in J05, based on distance and position angle with respect to the core.”