The variability of blazars throughout the electromagnetic spectrum

Abstract

With their jet pointing towards us, blazars are ideal tools to study the physics and structure of extragalactic jets. Their powerful jets are cosmic particle accelerators and are alleged to be one of the production sites of the high-energy neutrinos detected by the IceCube Observatory. Doppler beaming of the jet nonthermal radiation increases blazar brightness, blue-shifts their emission, and shortens their variability time scales, which are observed to range from years down to minutes. This review will focus on blazar flux, spectral, and polarization variability across the electromagnetic spectrum. Interpretation of blazar variability calls into question both intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms. Shock waves, magnetic reconnection, and turbulence can accelerate particles inside the jet, while jet precession, rotation, and twisting can produce variations in Doppler beaming. Microvariability puts strong constraints on the size of the emitting regions, suggesting a multizone emitting jet. Twisting jets have been proposed to explain the long-term multiwavelength variability. They are supported by radio observations of bent or helical jets, and by results of relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations of plasma jets. Detection of (quasi)periodic behaviour has been ascribed to orbital motion in black hole binary systems, jet precession, kink instabilities developing inside the jet, or perturbations in the accretion disc. Gravitational microlensing has been suggested to explain blazar behaviour in some cases. Polarization provides information on the structure and behaviour of the magnetic field in the emission zones. Both the degree and angle of polarization can show strong and fast variability, which is sometimes correlated with flux. The interpretation of flux, spectral, and polarization variability within a consistent picture challenges current models of blazar variability.