We use the complete MOJAVE 1.5 Jy sample of active galactic nuclei (AGN) to examine the gamma-ray detection statistics of the brightest radio-loud blazars in the northern sky. We find that 23% of these AGN were not detected above 0.1 GeV by the Fermi
LAT during the 4-year 3FGL catalog period partly because of an instrumental selection effect, and partly due to their lower Doppler boosting factors. Blazars with synchrotron peaks in their spectral energy distributions located below $10^{13.4}$ Hz also tend to have high-energy peaks that lie below the 0.1 GeV threshold of the LAT, and are thus less likely to be detected by Fermi. The non-detected AGN in the 1.5 Jy sample also have significantly lower 15 GHz radio modulation indices and apparent jet speeds, indicating that they have lower than average Doppler factors. Since the effective amount of relativistic Doppler boosting is enhanced in gamma-rays (particularly in the case of external inverse-Compton scattering), this makes them less likely to appear in the 3FGL catalog. Based on their observed properties, we have identified several bright radio-selected blazars that are strong candidates for future detection by Fermi.
In 2012 Markarian 421 underwent the largest flare ever observed in this blazar at radio frequencies. In the present study, we start exploring this unique event and compare it to a less extreme event in 2013. We use 15 GHz radio data obtained with the
Owens Valley Radio Observatory 40-m telescope, 95 GHz millimeter data from the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy, and GeV gamma-ray data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The radio light curves during the flaring periods in 2012 and 2013 have very different appearances, both in shape and peak flux density. Assuming that the radio and gamma-ray flares are physically connected, we attempt to model the most prominent sub-flares of the 2012 and 2013 activity periods by using the simplest possible theoretical framework. We first fit a one-zone synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) model to the less extreme 2013 flare and estimate parameters describing the emission region. We then model the major gamma-ray and radio flares of 2012 using the same framework. The 2012 gamma-ray flare shows two distinct spikes of similar amplitude, so we examine scenarios associating the radio flare with each spike in turn. In the first scenario, we cannot explain the sharp radio flare with a simple SSC model, but we can accommodate this by adding plausible time variations to the Doppler beaming factor. In the second scenario, a varying Doppler factor is not needed, but the SSC model parameters require fine tuning. Both alternatives indicate that the sharp radio flare, if physically connected to the preceding gamma-ray flares, can be reproduced only for a very specific choice of parameters.
Since mid-2007 we have carried out a dedicated long-term monitoring programme at 15 GHz using the Owens Valley Radio Observatory 40 meter telescope. One of the main goals of this programme is to study the relation between the radio and gamma-ray emis
sion in blazars and to use it as a tool to locate the site of high energy emission. Using this large sample of objects we are able to characterize the radio variability, and study the significance of correlations between the radio and gamma-ray bands. We find that the radio variability of many sources can be described using a simple power law power spectral density, and that when taking into account the red-noise characteristics of the light curves, cases with significant correlation are rare. We note that while significant correlations are found in few individual objects, radio variations are most often delayed with respect to the gamma-ray variations. This suggests that the gamma-ray emission originates upstream of the radio emission. Because strong flares in most known gamma-ray-loud blazars are infrequent, longer light curves are required to settle the issue of the strength of radio-gamma cross-correlations and establish confidently possible delays between the two. For this reason continuous multiwavelength monitoring over a longer time period is essential for statistical tests of jet emission models.
We present a practical implementation of a Monte Carlo method to estimate the significance of cross-correlations in unevenly sampled time series of data, whose statistical properties are modeled with a simple power-law power spectral density. This im
plementation builds on published methods, we introduce a number of improvements in the normalization of the cross-correlation function estimate and a bootstrap method for estimating the significance of the cross-correlations. A closely related matter is the estimation of a model for the light curves, which is critical for the significance estimates. We present a graphical and quantitative demonstration that uses simulations to show how common it is to get high cross-correlations for unrelated light curves with steep power spectral densities. This demonstration highlights the dangers of interpreting them as signs of a physical connection. We show that by using interpolation and the Hanning sampling window function we are able to reduce the effects of red-noise leakage and to recover steep simple power-law power spectral densities. We also introduce the use of a Neyman construction for the estimation of the errors in the power-law index of the power spectral density. This method provides a consistent way to estimate the significance of cross-correlations in unevenly sampled time series of data.
In order to determine the location of the gamma-ray emission site in blazars, we investigate the time-domain relationship between their radio and gamma-ray emission. Light-curves for the brightest detected blazars from the first 3 years of the missio
n of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope are cross-correlated with 4 years of 15GHz observations from the OVRO 40-m monitoring program. The large sample and long light-curve duration enable us to carry out a statistically robust analysis of the significance of the cross-correlations, which is investigated using Monte Carlo simulations including the uneven sampling and noise properties of the light-curves. Modeling the light-curves as red noise processes with power-law power spectral densities, we find that only one of 41 sources with high quality data in both bands shows correlations with significance larger than 3-sigma (AO 0235+164), with only two more larger than even 2.25-sigma (PKS 1502+106 and B2 2308+34). Additionally, we find correlated variability in Mrk 421 when including a strong flare that occurred in July-September 2012. These results demonstrate very clearly the difficulty of measuring statistically robust multiwavelength correlations and the care needed when comparing light-curves even when many years of data are used. This should be a caution. In all four sources the radio variations lag the gamma-ray variations, suggesting that the gamma-ray emission originates upstream of the radio emission. Continuous simultaneous monitoring over a longer time period is required to obtain high significance levels in cross-correlations between gamma-ray and radio variability in most blazars.
We use optical data from the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey (CRTS) to study the variability of gamma-ray detected and non-detected objects in a large population of active galactic nuclei (AGN) selected fro
m the Candidate Gamma-Ray Blazar Survey and Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope catalogs. Our samples include 714 sources with PTF data and 1244 sources with CRTS data. We calculate the intrinsic modulation index to quantify the optical variability amplitude in these samples. We find the gamma-ray detected objects to be more variable than the non-detected ones. The flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) are more variable than the BL Lac objects in our sample, but the significance of the difference depends on the sample used. When dividing the objects based on their synchrotron peak frequency, we find the low synchrotron peaked (LSP) objects to be significantly more variable than the high synchrotron peaked (HSP) ones, explaining the difference between the FSRQs and BL Lacs. This could be due to the LSPs being observed near their electron energy peak, while in the HSPs the emission is caused by lower energy electrons, which cool more slowly. We also find a significant correlation between the optical and gamma-ray fluxes that is stronger in the HSP BL Lacs than in the FSRQs. The FSRQs in our sample are also more Compton dominated than the HSP BL Lacs. These findings are consistent with models where the gamma-ray emission of HSP objects is produced by the synchrotron self-Compton mechanism, while the LSP objects need an additional external Compton component that increases the scatter in the flux-flux correlation.
The OVRO 40-m telescope has been monitoring the 15 GHz radio flux density of over 1200 blazars since 2008. The 15 GHz light curve of the flat spectrum radio quasar J1359+4011 shows a strong and persistent quasi-periodic oscillation. The time-scale of
the oscillation varies between 120 and 150 days over a $sim4$ year time span. We interpret this as the active galactic nucleus mass-scaled analog of low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations from Galactic microquasars, or as evidence of modulation of the accretion flow by thermal instabilites in the inner accretion disc.
We have compared the parsec-scale jet linear polarization properties of the Fermi LAT-detected and non-detected sources in the complete flux-density-limited (MOJAVE-1) sample of highly beamed AGN. Of the 123 MOJAVE sources, 30 were detected by the LA
T during its first three months of operation. We find that during the era since the launch of Fermi, the unresolved core components of the LAT-detected jets have significantly higher median fractional polarization at 15 GHz. This complements our previous findings that these LAT sources have higher apparent jet speeds, brightness temperatures and Doppler factors, and are preferentially found in higher activity states.
We investigate the dependence of gamma-ray brightness of blazars on intrinsic properties of their parsec-scale radio jets and the implication for relativistic beaming. By combining apparent jet speeds derived from high-resolution VLBA images from the
MOJAVE program with millimetre-wavelength flux density monitoring data from Metsahovi Radio Observatory, we estimate the jet Doppler factors, Lorentz factors, and viewing angles for a sample of 62 blazars. We study the trends in these quantities between the sources which were detected in gamma-rays by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) during its first three months of science operations and those which were not detected. The LAT-detected blazars have on average higher Doppler factors than non-LAT-detected blazars, as has been implied indirectly in several earlier studies. We find statistically significant differences in the viewing angle distributions between gamma-ray bright and weak sources. Most interestingly, gamma-ray bright blazars have a distribution of comoving frame viewing angles that is significantly narrower than that of gamma-ray weak blazars and centred roughly perpendicular to the jet axis. The lack of gamma-ray bright blazars at large comoving frame viewing angles can be explained by relativistic beaming of gamma-rays, while the apparent lack of gamma-ray bright blazars at small comoving frame viewing angles, if confirmed with larger samples, may suggest an intrinsic anisotropy or Lorentz factor dependence of the gamma-ray emission.
Radio-bright BL Lacertae objects (BLOs) are typically variable and exhibit prominent flaring. We use a sample of 24 BLOs to get a clear idea of their flaring behavior and to find possible commonalities in their variability patterns. Our goal was to c
ompare the results given by computational time scales and the observed variability parameters determined directly from the flux curves. Also, we wanted to find out if the BLO flares adhere to the generalized shock model. We use long-term monitoring data from 4.8, 8, 14.5, 22, 37, 90 and 230 GHz. The structure function, discrete correlation function and Lomb-Scargle periodogram time scales, calculated in a previous study, are analyzed in more detail. We determine flare durations, rise and decay times, absolute and relative peak fluxes from the monitoring data. We find that BLOs demonstrate a wide range of variability behavior. BLOs include sources with fast and strong variability, such as OJ 287, PKS 1749+096 and BL Lac, but also sources with more rolling fluctuations like PKS 0735+178. The most extreme flares can last for up to 13 years or have peak fluxes of approximately 12 Jy in the observers frame. When the Doppler boosting effect is taken into account, the peak flux of a flare does not depend on the duration of the flare. A rough analysis of the time lags and peak flux evolution indicates that BLO flares in the mm - cm wavelengths are high-peaking, i.e., are in the adiabatic stage. Thus, the results concur with the generalized shock model.
