Related papers: Rapid variability in TeV blazars: the case of PKS …
Through the modelling of the Spectral Energy Distribution of blazars we can infer the physical parameters required to originate the flux we see. Then we can estimate the power of blazar jets in the form of matter and fields. These estimates…
We study the stochastic variation of blazar emission under a 2-D spatially resolved leptonic jet model we previously developed. Random events of particle acceleration and injection in small zones within the emission region are assumed to be…
Gamma-ray binaries are systems composed of a compact object orbiting a massive companion star. The interaction between these two objects can drive relativistic outflows, either jets or winds, in which particles can be accelerated to…
The TeV extragalactic sky is dominated by blazars, radio-loud active galactic nuclei with a relativistic jet pointing towards the Earth. Blazars show variability that can be quite exceptional both in terms of flux (orders of magnitude of…
We compare the rise and decay timescales of $\sim$200 long-term ($\sim$weeks-months) GeV and R-band outbursts and $\sim$25 short-term ($\sim$hr-day) GeV flares in a sample of 10 blazars using light curves from the Fermi-LAT and the…
Three uninterrupted, long (lasting respectively 7, 10, and 10 days) ASCA observations of the well-studied TeV-bright blazars Mrk 421, Mrk 501 and PKS 2155-304 all show continuous strong X-ray flaring. Despite the relatively faint intensity…
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are known to show significant variability over a wide frequency range. We review observational results on the variability characteristics of blazars in the very high energy (VHE) domain, focusing on recent…
Blazars are promising sources of extragalactic high-energy astrophysical neutrinos, detected at energies $\gtrsim 10$ TeV by the IceCube neutrino observatory. Here, we report the first-ever broadband timing and spectral study of the…
The gamma-ray-detected blazar 3C 454.3 exhibits dramatic flux and polarization variations in the optical and near-infrared bands. In December 2010, the object emitted a very bright outburst. We monitored it for approximately four years…
B2 1215+30 is a BL Lac-type blazar that was first detected at TeV energies by the MAGIC atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, and subsequently confirmed by the VERITAS observatory with data collected between 2009 and 2012. In 2014 February 08,…
Blazars are characterized by large amplitude and fast variability, indicating that the electron distribution is rapidly changing, often on time scales shorter than the light crossing time. The emitting region is sufficiently compact to let…
Blazars are thought to emit highly-collimated outflows, so-called jets. By their close alignment to our line of sight, relativistic beaming effects enable us to observe these jets over the whole electromagnetic spectrum up to TeV energies,…
We present optical light curves for the period 1996-2000, of two of the brightest known EGRET BL Lac objects: PKS 2005-489 and PKS 2155-304, the latter also one of the few known TeV sources. For both objects, quiescent epochs of low level…
We investigate the temporal variability of polarization of synchrotron radiation from blazar jets. Multiwavelength observations revealed high-amplitude rotations of the electric vector position angle (EVPA), both in the optical and in the…
We present a new time-dependent inhomogeneous jet model of non-thermal blazar emission. Ultra-relativistic leptons are injected at the base of a jet and propagate along it. We assume continuous reacceleration and cooling, producing a…
The evolution of the spectral energy distribution during flares constrains models of particle acceleration in blazar jets. The archetypical blazar BL Lac provided a unique opportunity to study spectral variations during an extended strong…
We study the temporal/spectral variability of two extragalactic TeV sources, Mrk 421 and Mrk 501, based on 5-year observations with the ASCA and RXTE satellites. We found that the peak of the synchrotron emission exists just in the X-ray…
We have performed an optical observation campaign on PKS 2155-304, whose aim was to determine the variability properties of this object on very short time scales in several photometric bands. We detected variability on time scales as short…
We present a model of blazar variability that can both reproduce smooth large polarization angle swings, and at the same time allow for the seemingly random behaviour of synchrotron fluxes, polarization fraction and, occasionally, $\pi$/2…
We consider some implications of the rapid X-ray and TeV variability observed in M87 and the TeV blazars. We outline a model for jet focusing and demonstrate that modest radiative cooling can lead to recollimation of a relativistic jet in a…