Intra-night variability of the blazar CTA 102 during its 2012 and 2016 giant outbursts

Abstract

We obtained and analyzed more than 100 hours of multicolour optical time series of the blazar CTA 102 during its 2012 and 2016 outbursts. The object reached almost 11-th mag at the end of 2016, which is perhaps the brightest blazar state ever observed! During both outbursts, CTA 102 showed significant and rapid variability on intra-night time scales, reaching up to 0.2 mag for 30 min on some occasions. The "rms-flux" relation, built for all datasets, shows a large scatter and no apparent saturation on the magnitude scale. The ensemble structure function of the light curves can be fitted well with a straight line of a slope of $\sim$0.4. The time lags between the different optical bands appear to be consistent with zero, taking into account our time resolution. We discuss different variability scenarios and favor the changing Doppler factor of the emitting blobs as the most plausible one to account for the observed intra-night variability.

arXiv commentMNRAS, accepted

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• Fermi-Large Area Telescope observations of the brightest Gamma-ray flare ever detected from CTA 102
• Flare-like Variability of the Mg~II $\lambda$2798 Å Emission Line and UV Fe~II band in the Blazar CTA~102
• CTA 102 in exceptionally high state during 2016-17
• Intra-night optical flux and polarization variability of BL~Lacertae during its 2020 $-$ 2021 high state
• The extended flare in CTA 102 in 2016 and 2017 within a hadronic model through cloud ablation by the relativistic jet
• Optical variability in IBL S5 0716+714 during the 2013-2015 outburst
• Analysis of the intra-night variability of BL Lacertae during its August 2020 flare
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• Follow-up Observations for IceCube-170922A: Detection of Rapid Near-Infrared Variability and Intensive Monitoring of TXS 0506+056
• The Long-Lasting Activity in the Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar (FSRQ) CTA~102