Related papers: Optical EVPA rotations in blazars: testing a stoch…
We present measurements of rotations of the optical polarization of blazars during the second year of operation of RoboPol, a monitoring programme of an unbiased sample of gamma-ray bright blazars specially designed for effective detection…
The RoboPol program has been monitoring the $R$-band linear polarisation parameters of an unbiased sample of 60 gamma-ray-loud blazars and a "control" sample of 15 gamma-ray-quite ones. The prime drive for the program has been the…
We present first results on polarization swings in optical emission of blazars obtained by RoboPol, a monitoring program of an unbiased sample of gamma-ray bright blazars specially designed for effective detection of such events. A possible…
At optical wavelengths, blazar Electric Vector Position Angle (EVPA) rotations linked with gamma-ray activity have been the subject of intense interest and systematic investigation for over a decade. One difficulty in the interpretation of…
We present a new set of optical polarization plane rotations in blazars, observed during the third year of operation of RoboPol. The entire set of rotation events discovered during three years of observations is analysed with the aim of…
The RoboPol instrument and the relevant program was developed in order to conduct a systematic study of the optical polarisation variability of blazars. Driven by the discovery that long smooth rotations of the optical polarisation plane…
After three years of polarimetric monitoring of blazars, the RoboPol project has uncovered several key characteristics of polarimetric rotations in the optical for these most variable sources. The most important of these is that…
We present an automated pipeline for the detection of EVPA rotations in blazars, integrating correction of the 180$^\circ$ ambiguity, Bayesian Blocks segmentation, and statistical validation. Applied to RoboPol monitoring data, the method…
Over the past few years, several occasions of large, continuous rotations of the electric vector position angle (EVPA) of linearly polarized optical emission from blazars have been reported. These events are often coincident with high…
Rotations of the electric vector position angle (EVPA) in blazars are often close to an integral multiple of 180$^\circ$. There are multiple examples of this in the literature, and our analysis here, of the optical polarization data from…
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 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 use results of our 3 year polarimetric monitoring program to investigate the previously suggested connection between rotations of the polarization plane in the optical emission of blazars and their gamma-ray flares in the GeV band. The…
We present first results from RoboPol, a novel-design optical polarimeter operating at the Skinakas Observatory in Crete. The data, taken during the May - June 2013 commissioning of the instrument, constitute a single-epoch linear…
We present ~2000 polarimetric and ~3000 photometric observations of 15 gamma-ray bright blazars over a period of 936 days (11/10/2008 - 26/10/2012) using data from the Tuorla blazar monitoring program (KVA DIPOL) and Liverpool Telescope…
We present the design and performance of RoboPol, a four-channel optical polarimeter operating at the Skinakas Observatory in Crete, Greece. RoboPol is capable of measuring both relative linear Stokes parameters $q$ and $u$ (and the total…
We describe the data reduction pipeline and control system for the RoboPol project. The RoboPol project is monitoring the optical $R$-band magnitude and linear polarization of a large sample of active galactic nuclei that is dominated by…
Time-variable polarization is an extremely valuable observational tool to probe the dynamical physical conditions of blazar jets. Since 2008, we have been monitoring the flux and linear polarization of a sample of gamma-ray bright blazars…
Quasar 3C 279 is known to exhibit episodes of optical polarization angle rotation. We present new, well-sampled optical polarization data for 3C 279 and introduce a method to distinguish between random and deterministic electric vector…
Optical polarimeters are typically calibrated using measurements of stars with known and stable polarization parameters. However, there is a lack of such stars available across the sky. Many of the currently available standards are not…