Related papers: Rapid variability of blazars
The gamma-ray emission of blazar jets shows a pronounced variability and this feature provides limits to the size and to the speed of the emitting region. We study the gamma-ray variability of bright blazars using data from the first 18…
We have measured multi-band optical flux and colour variations for a sample of 12 low energy peaked blazars on short, day-to-month, timescales. Our sample contains six BL Lacertae objects and six flat spectrum radio quasars. These…
Due to the first results on astrophysical X-ray polarization provided by \textit{IXPE} observatory, the interest in wavelength-dependent synchrotron polarization of BL Lac type objects increases. This paper presents the results of…
We report on two BeppoSAX observations of BL Lac (2200+420) performed respectively in June and December 1999, as part of a ToO program to monitor blazars in high states of activity. During both runs the source has been detected up to 100…
BL Lacertae is a unique blazar for which the X-ray band can cover either the synchrotron or the inverse Compton, or both parts of the broadband spectral energy distribution. In the latter case, when the spectral upturn is located in the…
We report the results of optical monitoring for a sample of 11 blazars including 10 BL Lacs and 1 Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar (FSRQ). We have measured the multiband optical flux and colour variations in these blazars on intra-day and…
We reviewed X-ray flux and spectral variability properties studied to date by various X-ray satellites for Mrk 421 and PKS 2155-304, which are TeV emitting blazars. Mrk 421 and PKS 2155-304 are the most X-ray luminous blazars in the…
Strong X-ray and $\gamma$--ray flares have been detected in February 2010 from the high synchrotron peaked blazar Mrk 421 (z=0.031). With the motivation of understanding the physics involved in this flaring activity, we study the…
We investigate the spectral properties of the brightest gamma-ray flares of blazars detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope. We search for the presence of spectral breaks and measure the spectral curvature on typical time scales of a few…
Blazars are very broadband cosmic sources with spectra spanning over twenty orders of magnitude in frequency, down to the 100 MHz regime in the radio range, up to VHE at several tens of TeV. The modelling of their spectral energy…
Blazars are highly variable sources over timescales that can be as low as minutes. This is the case of the High Energy Peaked BL Lac (HBL) objects showing strong variability in X-rays, which highly correlate with that of the TeV emission.…
Flux distribution is an important tool to understand the variability processes in active galactic nuclei. We now have available a great deal of observational evidences pointing towards the presence of log-normal components in the high…
Many luminous blazars which are associated with quasar-type active galactic nuclei display broad-band spectra characterized by a large luminosity ratio of their high-energy (gamma-ray) and low-energy (synchrotron) spectral components. This…
Blazars are known to display strong and erratic variability at almost all the wavelengths of electromagnetic spectrum. Presently, variability studies at high-energies (hard X-rays, gamma-rays) are hampered by low sensitivity of the…
In this review, recent progress in theoretical models for blazar emission will be summarized. The salient features of both leptonic and lepto-hadronic approaches to modeling blazar spectral energy distributions will be reviewed. I will…
We report the main results of our six year long intensive optical monitoring on blazars ON 231 (W Com), BL Lac, and 3C 273. Intensive optical monitoring is an indispensable tool to obtain well sampled light curves and thus to understand the…
The phenomenology of gamma-ray bright blazars can be accounted for by a sequence in the source power and intensity of the diffuse radiation field surrounding the relativistic jet. Correspondingly, the equilibrium particle distribution peaks…
The variability of blazars in the X-ray and optical regions informs both the physics of their emitting region and places demands on the observer if a program requires that the object be bright or faint. The extensive simultaneous X-ray and…
We find that energy losses due to synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) emission in blazar jets can produce distinctive signatures in the time-averaged synchrotron and SSC spectra of these objects. For a fairly broad range of particle injection…
By studying the variability of blazars across the electromagnetic spectrum, it is possible to resolve the underlying processes responsible for rapid flux increases, so-called flares. We report on an extremely bright X-ray flare in the…