カテゴリー: blazar

TimeTubes: Visualization of Polarization Variations in Blazars

M. Uemura, R. Itoh, L. Xu, M. Nakayama, H.-Y. Wu, K. Watanabe, S. Takahashi, and I. Fujishiro, “TimeTubes: Visualization of Polarization Variations in Blazars”, Galaxies, 4, 23, 2016

Optical polarization provides important clues to the magnetic field in blazar jets. It is easy to find noteworthy patterns in the time-series data of the polarization degree (PD) and position angle (PA). On the other hand, we need to see the trajectory of the object in the Stokes QU plane when the object has multiple polarized components. In this case, ironically, the more data we have, the more difficult it is to gain any knowledge from it. Here, we introduce TimeTubes, a new visualization scheme to explore the time-series data of polarization observed in blazars. In TimeTubes, the data is represented by tubes in 3D (Q, U, and time) space. The measurement errors of Q and U, color, and total flux of objects are expressed as the size, color, and brightness of the tubes. As a result, TimeTubes allows us to see the behavior of six variables in one view. We used TimeTubes for our data taken by the Kanata telescope between 2008 and 2014. We found that this tool facilitates the recognition of the patterns in blazar variations; for example, favored PA of flares and PA rotations associated with a series of flares.

Photopolarimetric Monitoring of the Blazar BL Lac in the Optical and Near-Infrared Bands: Decay of the Long-Lived Component

K. Sakimoto, M. Uemura, M. Sasada, K. S. Kawabata, Y. Fukazawa, et al., “Photopolarimetric Monitoring of the Blazar BL Lac in the Optical and Near-Infrared Bands: Decay of the Long-Lived Component”, PASJ, vol. 65, p. 35

We report on the results of optical-near-infrared photopolarimetric observations of BL Lac conducted from 2008 to 2011. Our observations are consistent with past studies in which the behavior of the polarization of BL Lac could be understood with two components: short flares whose polarization angles randomly change, and a long-lived component. In addition, we detected a gradually decreasing trend in the total flux, the polarized flux, and the polarization degree without a large variation in the polarization angle from 2008 to mid-2009. These results suggest that the long-lived component decayed from 2008 to mid-2009. We propose that the long-lived component is not stationary, but is probably variable with a time-scale of years. We found no change in the activity of the short flares in 2008 and 2009, when the long-lived component was strong and weak, respectively. Furthermore, there were no clear differences in the mean color and the distribution of the polarization angle of the short flares from 2008 to 2009. These facts indicate that the emitting region of the long-term component was physically disconnected to that of the short flares. The color of the long-term component was bluer than that of the short flares, indicating a higher synchrotron peak-frequency. This could be due to a low efficiency of synchrotron and/or Compton cooling in the emitting region of the long-lived component. The long-term component is possibly originated from a relatively downstream region in the jet where the electron density is low, or the external radiation field is weak.

sak13bllac

Photopolarimetric Monitoring of Blazars

We report on the correlation between the flux, color, and polarization variations on time scales of days-months in blazars, and discuss their universal aspects. We performed monitoring of 42 blazars in the optical and near-infrared bands from 2008 to 2010 using TRISPEC attached to the “Kanata” 1.5-m telescope. We found that 28 blazars exhibited “bluer-when-brighter” trends in their whole or a part of time-series data sets. This corresponds to 88% of objects that were observed for >10 days. Thus, our observation unambiguously confirmed that the “bluer-when-brighter” trend is common in the emission from blazar jets. This trend was apparently generated by a variation component with a constant and relatively blue color and an underlying red component. Prominent short-term flares on time scales of days-weeks tended to exhibit a spectral hysteresis; their rising phases were bluer than their decay phases around the flare maxima. In contrast to the strong flux-color correlation, the correlation of the flux and polarization degree was relatively weak; only 10 objects showed significant positive correlations. Rotations of polarization were detected only in three objects: PKS 1510-089, 3C 454.3, and PKS 1749+096, and possibly in S5 0716+714. We also investigated the dependence of the degree of variability on the luminosity and the synchrotron peak frequency, νpeak. As a result, we found that lower luminosity and higher νpeak objects had smaller variations in their amplitudes both in the flux, color, and polarization degree. Our observation suggests the presence of several distinct emitting sources, which have different variation time-scales, colors, and polarizations. We propose that the energy injection by, for example, internal shocks in relativistic shells is a major factor for blazar variations on time scales of both days and months.

ike11blazar

This work was published in PASJ, as 2011PASJ…63..639I.

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