Testing particle acceleration in blazar jets with continuous high-cadence optical polarization observations
Journal
Date Issued
2024
Author(s)
Ioannis Liodakis
•
Sebastian Kiehlmann
•
Alan P. Marscher
•
Haocheng Zhang
•
Dmitry Blinov
•
Svetlana G. Jorstad
•
Iván Agudo
•
Erika Benítez
•
Andrei Berdyugin
•
•
Carolina Casadio
•
Chien-Ting Chen
•
Wen-Ping Chen
•
Steven R. Ehlert
•
Juan Escudero
•
Tatiana S. Grishina
•
David Hiriart
•
Angela Hsu
•
Ryo Imazawa
•
Helen E. Jermak
•
Jincen Jose
•
Philip Kaaret
•
Evgenia N. Kopatskaya
•
Bhavana Lalchand
•
Elena G. Larionova
•
Elina Lindfors
•
José M. López
•
Callum McCall
•
Daria A. Morozova
•
Efthymios Palaiologou
•
Shivangi Pandey
•
Juri Poutanen
•
Suvendu Rakshit
•
Pablo Reig
•
Mahito Sasada
•
Sergey S. Savchenko
•
Elena Shablovinskaya
•
Sharma Neha
•
Manisha Shrestha
•
Iain A. Steele
•
Ivan S. Troitskiy
•
Yulia V. Troitskaya
•
Makoto Uemura
•
Andrey A. Vasilyev
•
Zachary Weaver
•
Klaas Wiersema
•
Martin C. Weisskopf
Abstract
Variability can be the pathway to understanding the physical processes in
astrophysical jets, however, the high-cadence observations required to test
particle acceleration models are still missing. Here we report on the first
attempt to produce continuous, >24 hour polarization light curves of blazars
using telescopes distributed across the globe and the rotation of the Earth to
avoid the rising Sun. Our campaign involved 16 telescopes in Asia, Europe, and
North America. We observed BL Lacertae and CGRaBS J0211+1051 for a combined 685
telescope hours. We find large variations in the polarization degree and angle
for both sources in sub-hour timescales as well as a ~180 degree rotation of
the polarization angle in CGRaBS J0211+1051 in less than two days. We compared
our high-cadence observations to Particle-In-Cell magnetic reconnection and
turbulent plasma simulations. We find that although the state of the art
simulation frameworks can produce a large fraction of the polarization
properties, they do not account for the entirety of the observed polarization
behavior in blazar jets.
Volume
689
Start page
A200
Issn Identifier
0004-6361
Rights
open.access
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