Statistical properties of flux variations in blazar light curves at GeV and TeV energies
| Autor: | Wagner, Sarah M., Burd, Paul R., Dorner, Daniela, Mannheim, Karl, Buson, Sara, Gokus, Andrea, Madejski, Greg, Scargle, Jeffrey D., Arbet-Engels, Axel, Baack, Dominik, Balbo, Matteo, Biland, Adrian, Bretz, Thomas, Buss, Jens, Eisenberger, Laura, Elsaesser, Dominik, Hildebrand, Dorothee, Iotov, Roman, Kalenski, Adelina, Neise, Dominik, Noethe, Maximilian, Paravac, Aleksander, Rhode, Wolfgang, Schleicher, Bernd, Sliusar, Vitalii, Walter, Roland |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: | |
| Druh dokumentu: | Working Paper |
| DOI: | 10.22323/1.395.0868 |
| Popis: | Despite numerous detections of individual flares, the physical origin of the rapid variability observed from blazars remains uncertain. Using Bayesian blocks and the Eisenstein-Hut HOP algorithm, we characterize flux variations of high significance in the $\gamma$-ray light curves of two samples of blazars. Daily binned long-term light curves of TeV-bright blazars observed with the First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) are compared to those of GeV-bright blazars observed with the Large Area Telescope on board the $Fermi$ Gamma-ray Space Telescope ($Fermi$-LAT). We find no evidence for systematic asymmetry of the flux variations based on the derived rise and decay time scales. Additionally, we show that the daily-binned blazar light curves can be described by an exponential stochastic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process with parameters depending on energy. Our analysis suggests that the flux variability in both samples is a superposition of faster fluctuations. This is, for instance, challenging to explain by shock-acceleration but expected for magnetic reconnection. Comment: for associated HOP algorithm, see https://github.com/swagner-astro/lightcurves and for associated OU algorithm, see https://github.com/PRBurd/astro-wue |
| Databáze: | arXiv |
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