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Register a new userProminent Polarized Flares of the Blazars AO 0235+164 and PKS 1510-089
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We report on multi-band photometric and polarimetric observations of the blazars AO 0235+164 and PKS 1510-089. These two blazars were active in 2008 and 2009, respectively. In these active states, prominent short flares were observed in both objects, having amplitudes of >1 mag within 10 d. The $V-J$ color became bluer when the objects were brighter in these flares. On the other hand, the color of PKS 1510-089 exhibited a trend that it became redder when it was brighter, except for its prominent flare. This redder-when-brighter trend can be explained by the strong contribution of thermal emission from an accretion disk. The polarization degree increased at the flares, and reached >25 % at the maxima. We compare these flares in AO 0235+164 and PKS 1510-089 with other short flares which were detected by our monitoring of 41 blazars. Those two flares had one of the largest variation amplitudes in both flux and polarization degree. Furthermore, we found a significant positive correlation between the amplitudes of the flux and polarization degree in the short flares. It indicates that the short flares originate from the region where the magnetic field is aligned.
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The flat spectrum radio quasar (FSRQ) PKS 1510-089 (z=0.361) is known for its complex multiwavelength behavior. It has been monitored regularly at very high energy (VHE, $E>100,$GeV) gamma-rays with H.E.S.S. since its discovery in 2009 in order to study the unknown behavior of FSRQs in quiescence at VHE, as well as the flux evolution around flaring events. Given the expected strong cooling of electrons and the absorption of VHE emission within the broad-line region, a detection of PKS 1510-089 at VHE in a quiescent state would be an important result, implying an acceleration and emission region on scales beyond the broad-line region. The H.E.S.S. monitoring has been intensified since 2015 and is complemented by monitoring at high energy ($E>100,$MeV) gamma-rays with Fermi, at X-rays with Swift-XRT, and at optical frequencies with ATOM. The dense lightcurves allow for the first time detailed comparison studies between these energy bands. The source has been active in several frequency bands for a large fraction of the observation time frames. Yet, we do not find obvious correlations between the VHE and the other bands over the observed time frame indicating a non-trivial interplay of the acceleration, cooling and radiative processes. It also implies a rich variety in flaring behavior, which makes this source difficult to interpret within a unique theoretical framework.
Variability is one of the extreme observational properties of BL Lacertae objects. AO 0235+164 is a well studied BL Lac through the whole electro-magnetic wavebands. In the present work, we show its optical R band photometric observations carried out during the period of Nov, 2006 to Dec. 2012 using the Ap6E CCD camera attached to the primary focus of the $rm 70-cm$ meniscus telescope at Abastumani Observatory, Georgia. It shows a large variation of $Delta R$ = 4.88 mag (14.19 - 19.07 mag) and a short time scale of $Delta T_v$ = 73.5 min during our monitoring period. During the period of Dec. 2006 to Nov. 2009, we made radio observations of the source using the 25-m radio telescope at Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory. When a discrete correlation function (DCF) is adopted to the optical and radio observations, we found that the optical variation leads the radio variation by 23.2$pm$12.9 days.
The flat spectrum radio quasar PKS 1510-089 is a monitored target in many wavelength bands due to its high variability. It was detected as a very-high-energy (VHE) $gamma$-ray emitter with H.E.S.S. in 2009, and has since been a regular target of VHE observations by the imaging Cherenkov observatories H.E.S.S. and MAGIC. In this paper, we summarize the current state of results focusing on the monitoring effort with H.E.S.S. and the discovery of a particularly strong VHE flare in 2016 with H.E.S.S. and MAGIC. While the source has now been established as a weak, but regular emitter at VHE, no correlation with other energy bands has been established. This is underlined by the 2016 VHE flare, where the detected optical and high-energy $gamma$-ray counterparts evolve differently than the VHE flux.
Blazars are the most luminous and variable AGNs, and thus excellent probes of accretion and emission processes close to the central engine. We focus on PKS 1510-089 ($z=0.36$), one of the brightest gamma-ray sources in the Fermi LAT catalog, to study its complex multi-wavelength variability. PKS 1510-089 was observed twice in hard X-rays with the IBIS instrument onboard INTEGRAL during the flares of Jan 2009 and Jan 2010, and simultaneously with Swift and NOT, in addition to the constant Fermi monitoring. The optical polarization was measured in several bands on 18 Jan 2010 at the NOT. Using our and archival data we constructed historical light curves at gamma-to-radio wavelengths covering nearly 20 years and applied variability tests. We assembled SEDs in 2009 and 2010 and compared them with those at two previous epochs and with a model based on synchrotron and inverse Compton (IC) radiation. The SED modeling suggests that the physical quantities that undergo the largest variations are the total power injected into the emitting region and the random Lorentz factor of the electron distribution cooling break, that are higher in the higher gamma-ray states. This suggests a correlation of the injected power with enhanced activity of the acceleration mechanism. The cooling likely takes place at a much smaller distance ($sim$0.03 pc) than the BLR radius. The emission at a few hundred GeV can be reproduced with IC scattering of highly relativistic electrons off FIR photons at $sim$0.2 pc, presumably in a dusty torus. DCF analysis between the long-term optical and gamma-ray light curves yields a good correlation with no measurable delay. Our time analysis of the RXTE PCA and Fermi LAT light curves reveals no obvious (quasi-)periodicities, up to the maximum time scale (a few years) probed by the light curves, which are severely affected by red noise.
AO 0235+164 is a very compact, flat spectrum radio source identified as a BL Lac object at a redshift of z=0.94. It is one of the most violently variable extragalactic objects at both optical and radio wavelengths. The radio structure of the source revealed by various ground-based VLBI observations is dominated by a nearly unresolved compact component at almost all available frequencies. Dual-frequency space VLBI observations of AO 0235+164 were made with the VSOP mission in January-February 1999. The array of the Japanese HALCA satellite and co-observing ground radio telescopes in Australia, Japan, China and South Africa allowed us to study AO 0235+164 with an unprecedented angular resolution at frequencies of 1.6 and 5 GHz. We report on the sub-milliarcsecond structural properties of the source. The 5-GHz observations led to an estimate of T_B > 5.8 x 10^{13} K for the rest-frame brightness temperature of the core, which is the highest value measured with VSOP to date.
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