A search for chaos in the optical light curve of a blazar: W2R 1926+42

TL;DR

This study investigates whether the optical light curve of the blazar W2R 1926+42 exhibits low-dimensional chaos, using correlation integral analysis on extensive Kepler data, and finds no evidence supporting chaos presence.

Contribution

The paper applies the correlation integral method to a large, high-quality blazar light curve to test for chaos, providing new insights into blazar emission mechanisms.

Findings

No evidence of low-dimensional chaos was found in the light curve.

Results suggest the emission process may not be governed by simple chaotic dynamics.

Implications for understanding blazar variability mechanisms.

Abstract

In this work we search for signatures of low-dimensional chaos in the temporal behavior of the Kepler-field blazar W2R 1946+42. We use a publicly available, ~160000 points long and mostly equally spaced, light curve of W2R 1946+42. We apply the correlation integral method to both -- real datasets and phase randomized "surrogates". We are not able to confirm the presence of low-dimensional chaos in the light curve. This result, however, still leads to some important implications for blazar emission mechanisms, which are discussed.