Statistical properties of flux variations in blazar light curves at GeV and TeV energies

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Abstract

Despite numerous detections of individual flares, the physical origin of the rapid variability observed from blazars remains uncertain. Using Bayesian blocks and the Eisenstein-Hut HOP algorithm, we characterize flux variations of high significance in the γ-ray light curves of two samples of blazars. Daily binned long-term light curves of TeV-bright blazars observed with the First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) are compared to those of GeV-bright blazars observed with the Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (Fermi-LAT). We find no evidence for systematic asymmetry of the flux variations based on the derived rise and decay time scales. Additionally, we show that the daily-binned blazar light curves can be described by an exponential stochastic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process with parameters depending on energy. Our analysis suggests that the flux variability in both samples is a superposition of faster fluctuations. This is, for instance, challenging to explain by shock-acceleration but expected for magnetic reconnection.

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Wagner, S. M., Burd, P. R., Dorner, D., Mannheim, K., Buson, S., Gokus, A., … Walter, R. (2022). Statistical properties of flux variations in blazar light curves at GeV and TeV energies. In Proceedings of Science (Vol. 395). Sissa Medialab Srl. https://doi.org/10.22323/1.395.0868

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