RoboPol: Connection between optical polarization plane rotations and gamma-ray flares in blazars

Abstract

We use results of our 3 year polarimetric monitoring program to investigate the previously suggested connection between rotations of the polarization plane in the optical emission of blazars and their gamma-ray flares in the GeV band. The homogeneous set of 40 rotation events in 24 sources detected by {\em RoboPol} is analysed together with the gamma-ray data provided by {\em Fermi}-LAT. We confirm that polarization plane rotations are indeed related to the closest gamma-ray flares in blazars and the time lags between these events are consistent with zero. Amplitudes of the rotations are anticorrelated with amplitudes of the gamma-ray flares. This is presumably caused by higher relativistic boosting (higher Doppler factors) in blazars that exhibit smaller amplitude polarization plane rotations. Moreover, the time scales of rotations and flares are marginally correlated.

12 pages, 16 figures, accepted to MNRAS

References in corpus (10)

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• The power of blazar jets
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Cited by in corpus (11)

• RoboPol: A four-channel optical imaging polarimeter
• Probing the Emission Mechanism and Magnetic Field of Neutrino Blazars with Multi-Wavelength Polarization Signatures
• The Polarization Behavior of Relativistic Synchrotron Self-Compton Jets
• Optical spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray blazar candidates VIII: the 2016-2017 follow up campaign carried out at SPM, NOT, KPNO and SOAR telescopes
• Probing shock acceleration in BL Lac jets through X-ray polarimetry: the time-dependent view
• The RoboPol Program: Optical Polarimetric Monitoring of Blazars
• The $\gamma$-ray sky seen at X-ray energies II: the Swift hunt of Fermi BL Lac objects among unidentified gamma-ray sources
• Probing the unidentified Fermi blazar-like population using optical polarization and machine learning
• On the connection of radio and $\gamma$-ray emission in blazars
• Progress in Multiwavelength and Multi-Messenger Observations of Blazars and Theoretical Challenges
• Relativistic Jets in Gamma-Ray-Emitting Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies