Monitoring of Bright Blazars with MAGIC in the 2007/2008 Season

TL;DR

This paper reports on long-term monitoring of bright TeV blazars with the MAGIC telescope during 2007/2008, aiming to understand flaring behavior and correlations across different wavebands.

Contribution

It presents the first long-term, unbiased observational campaign of bright TeV blazars, providing valuable data on their variability and multiwavelength correlations.

Findings

Light curves of monitored blazars are presented.

Correlation between VHE gamma-rays and X-rays observed in Mrk 421.

Preliminary results suggest multiwavelength flaring activity patterns.

Abstract

Because of the short duty-cycles and observation-time constraints, studies of bright TeV (E>100 GeV) blazars are mostly restricted to flaring episodes or rather short (days to few weeks) multiwavelength campaigns. At the same time, long-term studies of these objects are essential to gain a more complete understanding of the blazar phenomenon and to constrain theoretical models concerning jet physics. Only unbiased long-term studies are adequate for the determination of flaring state probabilities and for estimating the statistical significance of possible correlations between TeV flaring states and other wavebands or observables, such as neutrino events. Regular observations also provide triggers for multiwavelength ToO observations originating from the TeV waveband. These are particularly needed to identify and study orphan TeV flares, i.e. flares without counterparts in other wavebands. In 2007/8 the MAGIC telescope has monitored three TeV blazars on a regular basis: Mrk 501, Mrk 421, and 1ES 1959+650. We present preliminary results of these observations including the measured light curves and a correlation study for VHE gamma-rays and X-rays and VHE gamma-rays and optical R-band for Mrk 421.