Characterizing the Optical Variability of Bright Blazars: Variability-Based Selection of Fermi Active Galactic Nuclei
Abstract
We investigate the use of optical photometric variability to select and identify blazars in large-scale time-domain surveys, in part to aid in the identification of blazar counterparts to the 30% of -ray sources in the Fermi 2FGL catalog still lacking reliable associations. Using data from the optical LINEAR asteroid survey, we characterize the optical variability of blazars by fitting a damped random walk model to individual light curves with two main model parameters, the characteristic timescales of variability , and driving amplitudes on short timescales .
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 20, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA586710
Entities
People
- Andrew C. Becker
- Branimir Sesar
- Chelsea L. Macleod
- Christopher S. Kochanek
- James R. Davenport
- John J. Ruan
- Richard M. Plotkin
- Scott F. Anderson
- T. H. Burnett
- Zeljko Ivezic
Organizations
- California Institute of Technology