Patterns and Coincidences in the Light Curves of Active Galaxies
pith:KWSWECKU Add to your LaTeX paper
What is a Pith Number?\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{KWSWECKU}
Prints a linked pith:KWSWECKU badge after your title and writes the identifier into PDF metadata. Compiles on arXiv with no extra files. Learn more
read the original abstract
We draw attention to some intriguing coincident patterns in the optical light curves of NGC 4151 and NGC 5548. Inspecting the light curves of these two classic Seyferts, we find evidence for at least five occurrences of a similar sequence of variations. This pattern consists of a ~ 2 yr long sequence of shorter flares, with a total energy of 3--5 10^{50} ergs in the B-band. We predict that the on-going monitoring campain on NGC 5548 should soon reveal more occurrences of this general pattern if it is truly recurrent. We speculate on the possibility that this pattern is associated with a fundamental/universal `unit' of variability in active galaxies, and discuss a possible connection with the variability properties of QSOs.
This paper has not been read by Pith yet.
discussion (0)
Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.