Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Goyal, A
• Gopal-Krishna, Gopal-Krishna
• Wiita, P J
• Anupama, G C
• Sahu, D K
• Sagar, R
• Joshi, S

Titel

Intra-night optical variability of core dominated radio quasars: the role of optical polarization

Ist Teil von

• Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin), 2012-08, Vol.544, p.1-1

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Rapid variations in optical flux are seen in many quasars and all blazars. The amount of variability in different classes of active galactic nuclei has been studied extensively but many questions remain unanswered. The authors present the results of a long-term programme to investigate the intra-night optical variability (INOV) of powerful flat spectrum radio core-dominated quasars (CDQ), with a focus on probing the relationship of INOV to the degree of optical polarization. As the existence of a prominent flat-spectrum radio core signifies that strong relativistic beaming is present in all these CDQs, the definitions of the two sets differ primarily in fractional optical polarization, with the LPCDQs showing a very low median Pop [NOT approximately equal to ] 0.4%. From this strong contrast between the two classes of luminous, relativistically beamed quasars, it is apparent that relativistic beaming is normally not a sufficient condition for strong INOV and a high optical polarization is the other necessary condition.