The flaring activity of blazar AO 0235+164 during year 2021

Abstract

Context. The blazar AO 0235+164, located at redshift $z=0.94$, has displayed interesting and repeating flaring activity in the past, the latest episodes occurring in 2008 and 2015. In 2020, the source brightened again, starting a new flaring episode that peaked in 2021. Aims. We study the origin and properties of the 2021 flare in relation to previous studies and the historical behavior of the source, in particular to the 2008 and 2015 flaring episodes. Methods. We analyze the multi-wavelength photo-polarimetric evolution of the source. From Very Long Baseline Array images, we derive the kinematic parameters of new components associated with the 2021 flare. We use this information to constrain a model for the spectral energy distribution of the emission during the flaring period. We propose an analytical geometric model to test whether the observed wobbling of the jet is consistent with precession. Results. We report the appearance of two new components that are ejected in a different direction than previously, confirming the wobbling of the jet. We find that the direction of ejection is consistent with that of a precessing jet.The derived period independently agrees with the values commonly found in the literature. Modeling of the spectral energy distribution further confirm that the differences between flares can be attributed to geometrical effects.

arXiv commentAccepted 15 May 2024

References in corpus (23)

• Understanding the Lomb-Scargle Periodogram
• Multi-messenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A
• Polarimetric Observations of 15 Active Galactic Nuclei at High Frequencies: Jet Kinematics from Bimonthly Monitoring with the Very Long Baseline Array
• The Submillimeter Array
• Reverberation Mapping of High-Luminosity Quasars: First Results
• Swift observations of the very intense flaring activity of Mrk 421 during 2006: I. Phenomenological picture of electron acceleration and predictions for the MeV/GeV emission
• Stochastic Acceleration and the Evolution of Spectral Distributions in SSC Sources: A Self Consistent Modeling of Blazars' Flares
• On the Reliability of Cross Correlation Function Lag Determinations in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Spitzer Observations of 3C Quasars and Radio Galaxies: Mid-Infrared Properties of Powerful Radio Sources
• Jet stability and the generation of superluminal and stationary components
• Kinematics of Parsec-Scale Jets of Gamma-Ray Bright Blazars at 43 GHz during Ten Years of the VLBA-BU-BLAZAR Program
• On the Location of the Gamma-ray Emission in the 2008 Outburst in the BL Lacertae Object AO 0235+164 through Observations across the Electromagnetic Spectrum
• Helical jets in blazars. Interpretation of the multifrequency long-term variability of AO 0235+16
• Probing Acceleration and Turbulence at Relativistic Shocks in Blazar Jets
• POLAMI: Polarimetric Monitoring of Active Galactic Nuclei at Millimetre Wavelengths. I. The program, calibration, and calibrators data products
• POLAMI: Polarimetric Monitoring of Active Galactic Nuclei at Millimetre Wavelengths. III. Characterisation of total flux density and polarisation variability of relativistic jets
• A multi-wavelength polarimetric study of the blazar CTA 102 during a Gamma-ray flare in 2012
• Multi-wavelength observations of blazar AO 0235+164 in the 2008-2009 flaring state
• POLAMI: Polarimetric Monitoring of Active Galactic Nuclei at Millimetre Wavelengths. II. Widespread circular polarisation
• Multiwavelength periodicity search in a sample of $\gamma$-ray bright blazars
• On the distribution of fluxes of gamma-ray blazars: hints for a stochastic process?
• The RoboPol Program: Optical Polarimetric Monitoring of Blazars
• The Repeating Flaring Activity of Blazar AO 0235+164

Cited by in corpus (2)

• PKS 2155-304: Long-Term Optical Photometric Monitoring and Variability Analysis
• Parsec-scale jet precession and a putative supermassive binary black hole system in the blazar AO 0235+164