Evidence for quasi-periodic oscillations in the optical polarization of the blazar PKS 2155-304

Abstract

Evidence for the presence of quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in the optical polarization of the blazar PKS 2155-304, during a period of enhanced gamma-ray brightness, is presented. The periodogram of the polarized flux revealed the existence of a prominent peak at $T\sim 13$ min, detected at >99.7% significance, and $T\sim 30$ min, which was nominally significant at >99%. This is the first evidence of QPOs in the polarization of an active galactic nucleus, potentially opening up a new avenue of studying this phenomenon.

5 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (2)

• Correlated Multi-Waveband Variability in the Blazar 3C~279 from 1996 to 2007
• Modelling rapid TeV variability of PKS 2155-304

Cited by in corpus (6)

• A comprehensive power spectral density analysis of astronomical time series I: the Fermi-LAT gamma-ray light curves of selected blazars
• Blazar variability power spectra from radio up to TeV photon energies: Mrk 421 and PKS 2155-304
• X-ray Intraday Variability of the TeV Blazar PKS 2155-304 with Suzaku During 2005-2014
• Study of correlation between optical flux and polarization variations in BL Lac objects
• Can Turbulence Dominate Depolarization of Optical Blazars?
• About 300 days optical quasi-periodic oscillations in the long-term light curves of the blazar PKS 2155-304