Volume 395 - 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2021) - GAI - Gamma Ray Indirect
Statistical properties of flux variations in blazar light curves at GeV and TeV energies
S.M. Wagner*, P. Burd, D. Dorner, K. Mannheim, S. Buson, A. Gokus, G. Madejski, J. Scargle, A. Arbet-Engels, D. Baack, M. Balbo, A. Biland, T. Bretz, J. Buss, D. Elsaesser, L. Eisenberger, D. Hildebrand, R. Iotov, A. Kalenski, D. Neise, M. Noethe, A. Paravac, W. Rhode, B. Schleicher, V. Sliusar and R. Walteret al. (click to show)
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Pre-published on: July 06, 2021
Published on: March 18, 2022
Abstract
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 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.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.395.0868
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