Connection Between Optical and VHE Gamma-ray Emission in Blazar Jets

Abstract

MAGIC has been performing optically triggered Target of Opportunity observations of flaring blazars since the beginning of its scientific operations. The alerts of flaring blazars originate from Tuorla Blazar Monitoring Programme, which started the optical monitoring of candidtate TeV blazars in 2002 and has now collected up to eight years of data on more than 60 blazars. These ToO observations have resulted in the discovery of five new VHE gamma-ray emitting blazars (S5 0716+714, 1ES 1011+496, Mrk 180, ON 325 and B3 2247+381). In addition part of the discovery of BL Lac and the discovery of 3C 279 was made during a high optical state. In this contribution we present a detailed analysis of the optical light curves which are then compared to MAGIC observations of the same sources. We aim to answer the question: "Is there a connection between optical and VHE -ray high states in blazars or have we just been lucky?"

6 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables, proceedings for the Beamed and Unbeamed Gamma-Rays from Galaxies workshop, Olos, April 11-15 2011

References in corpus (10)

• VHE Gamma-Ray Observation of the Crab Nebula and its Pulsar with the MAGIC telescope
• Insights Into the High-Energy Gamma-ray Emission of Markarian 501 from Extensive Multifrequency Observations in the Fermi Era
• Correlated Multi-Waveband Variability in the Blazar 3C~279 from 1996 to 2007
• Simultaneous observations of PKS 2155-304 with H.E.S.S., Fermi, RXTE and ATOM: spectral energy distributions and variability in a low state
• Host galaxy subtraction of TeV candidate BL Lacertae objects
• Discovery of Very High Energy gamma-rays from 1ES 1011+496 at z=0.212
• MAGIC observations and multiwavelength properties of the quasar 3C279 in 2007 and 2009
• Discovery of Very High Energy gamma-rays from the blazar S5 0716+714
• Discovery of a very high energy gamma-ray signal from the 3C 66A/B region
• INTEGRAL observations of the blazar Mrk 421 in outburst (Results of a multi-wavelength campaign)

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Optical polarization of high-energy BL Lac objects
• Discovery of VHE gamma-rays from the blazar 1ES 1215+303 with the MAGIC Telescopes and simultaneous multi-wavelength observations
• MAGIC observations and multifrequency properties of the Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar 3C 279 in 2011
• Optical and Radio variability of the Northern VHE gamma-ray emitting BL Lac objects