RoboPol: first season rotations of optical polarization plane in blazars
Journal article, 2015

We present first results on polarization swings in optical emission of blazars obtained by RoboPol, a monitoring programme of an unbiased sample of gamma-ray bright blazars specially designed for effective detection of such events. A possible connection of polarization swing events with periods of high activity in gamma-rays is investigated using the data set obtained during the first season of operation. It was found that the brightest gamma-ray flares tend to be located closer in time to rotation events, which may be an indication of two separate mechanisms responsible for the rotations. Blazars with detected rotations during non-rotating periods have significantly larger amplitude and faster variations of polarization angle than blazars without rotations. Our simulations show that the full set of observed rotations is not a likely outcome (probability ≤1.5 × 10-2) of a random walk of the polarization vector simulated by a multicell model. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely (∼5 × 10-5) that none of our rotations is physically connected with an increase in gamma-ray activity.

Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

galaxies: nuclei

polarization

galaxies: jets

galaxies: active

Author

Dmitriy Blinov

Saint Petersburg State University - Spsu

University of Crete

et al.

Georgia Panopoulou

University of Crete

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

0035-8711 (ISSN) 1365-2966 (eISSN)

Vol. 453 2 1669-1683

Subject Categories

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

DOI

10.1093/mnras/stv1723

More information

Latest update

11/17/2023