Related papers: Variability, Power, and Pair Content of AGN Jets
We review the main topics in the field of blazar multiwavelength variability as a tool to understand the physics and structure of extragalactic jets and their central engine. We address issues such as the cross-correlation between flux…
Blazars are among the most powerful extragalactic objects, as a sub-class of active galactic nuclei. They launch relativistic jets and their emitted radiation shows strong variability across the entire electro-magnetic spectrum. The…
Blazars are a subclass of radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs), where the jet is aligned close to the line of sight. Blazars emission is dominated by non-thermal processes, where Doppler boosted radiation originates from a relativistic…
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…
Recent observational and theoretical results on blazars are presented and discussed. We are beginning to understand the rich phenomenology of blazars, and we are finding trends which will hopefully lead us to unveil the physics of these…
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…
Blazars are thought to possess a relativistic jet that is pointing toward the direction of the Earth and the elect of relativistic beaming enhances its apparent brightness. They radiate in all wavebands from the radio to the gamma-ray bands…
We use frequency-dependent position shifts of flat spectrum radio cores to estimate the kinetic power of AGN jets. We find a correlation between the derived jet powers and AGN narrow-line luminosity, consistent with the well-known relation…
The extreme variability of blazars, in both timescale and amplitude, is generally explained as the effect of a relativistic jet closely aligned to the observer's line-of-sight. Due to causality arguments, variability characteristics…
The current status of leptonic jet models for gamma-ray blazars is reviewed. Differences between the quasar and BL-Lac subclasses of blazars may be understood in terms of the dominance of different radiation mechanisms in the gamma-ray…
Our understanding of the unification of jetted AGN has evolved greatly as jet samples have increased in size. Here, based on the largest-ever sample of over 2000 well-sampled jet spectral energy distributions, we examine the synchrotron…
Blazars display strong variability on multiple timescales and in multiple radiation bands. Their variability is often characterized by power spectral densities (PSDs) and time lags plotted as functions of the Fourier frequency. We develop a…
Blazar jets are renowned for their rapid violent variability and multiwavelength flares, however, the physical processes responsible for these flares are not well understood. In this paper we develop a time-dependent inhomogeneous fluid jet…
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…
The multiwavelength spectra of blazars appear to be dominated by nonthermal emission from a relativistic jet oriented close to the line of sight. The recent detection of many blazars at gamma-ray energies strongly supports this scenario.…
Blazars are known to emit a broad band emission from radio to gamma-rays with rapid time variations, particularly, in X- and gamma-rays. Synchrotron radiation and inverse Compton scattering are thought to play an important role in emission…
A jet model for Galactic black-hole X-ray binaries will be presented that appears to explain several observational characteristics. In particular, it explains the energy spectrum from radio to hard X-rays, the time-lags as a function of…
Blazars are a rare class of active galactic nuclei (AGN) with relativistic jets pointing towards the observer. Jets are thought to be launched as Poynting-flux dominated outflows that accelerate to relativistic speeds at the expense of the…
We perform time-dependent, spatially-resolved simulations of blazar emission to evaluate several flaring scenarios related to magnetic-field amplification and enhanced particle acceleration. The code explicitly accounts for…
Blazars are variable targets in the sky, whose variation mechanism remains an open question. In this work, we make a comprehensive study on the variation phenomena of the spectral index and polarization degree (PD) to deeply understand the…