Speaker
Mr
Ioannis Liodakis
(University of Crete, FORTH)
Description
Blazars are known to show periods of quiescence followed by extreme outbursts seen throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. We present a novel maximum likelihood approach to capturing this bimodal behavior by examining blazar radio variability in the flux-density domain. We separate quiescent and flaring components of a source's light curve by modeling its flux-density distribution as a series of "off" and "on" states. Our modeling allows us to extract information regarding the flaring ratio (S_{on}/S_{off}), duty cycle, and the modulation index in the "off"-state, in the "on"-state, as well as throughout the monitoring period of each blazar. We apply our method to a flux-density-limited subsample from the Owens Valley Radio observatory's 15 GHz blazar monitoring program, and explore differences in the variability characteristics between the different classes of blazars as well as gamma-ray detected and non-detected sources.
Primary author
Mr
Ioannis Liodakis
(University of Crete, FORTH)
