Testing the mechanisms for optical micro-variability of powerful active galactic nuclei

Details Testing the mechanisms for optical micro-variability of powerful active galactic nuclei Testing the mechanisms for optical micro-variability of powerful active galactic nuclei

Sep 1993

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993basi...21..441g&link_type=abstract

Astronomical Society of India, Bulletin (ISSN 0304-9523), vol. 21, no. 3-4, p. 441-445

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

3

Accretion Disks, Active Galactic Nuclei, Quasars, Relativistic Plasmas, Variability, Astronomical Photometry, Data Correlation, Data Reduction, Flux Density, Mapping

Scientific paper

We present the first results of a new type of observational program being carried out using the 2.34m Vainu Bappu Telescope at Kavalur. This program involves intra-night optical monitoring of radio quiet but optically luminous quasars. This experiment is expected to provide a fairly straight-forward test of the two major mechanisms that have been proposed so far to explain the phenomenon of optical micro-variability of powerful active galactic nuclei (AGN), which has been established during the past 4 years. The two categories of mechanisms involve (1) shocks moving in the relativistic jets and (2) random hot spots occurring on the quasar accretion disks. Our optical monitoring of the 7 radio-quiet quasars, so far, has not revealed any clear event of intra-night variability. Positive detection of such a variability would provide a strong support to the model invoking accretion disks, while a clear absence of such events would strongly favor the models relying on shocks propagating down the relativistic jets.

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