Analyses on the Variability Asymmetry of Kepler AGNs

TL;DR

This study uses Kepler data to analyze the symmetry of optical variability in 19 AGNs, finding that short-term variations are highly symmetric with no significant asymmetry detected.

Contribution

It introduces a smoothing-correction method and a $eta$ parameter to quantitatively analyze variability asymmetry in AGNs using Kepler data.

Findings

No evidence of asymmetry at 1-20 day timescales.

Average $eta$ values are statistically consistent with zero.

Quasars and Seyfert galaxies show similar symmetry in variability.

Abstract

The high quality light curves of Kepler space telescope make it possible to analyze the optical variability of AGNs with an unprecedented time resolution. Studying the asymmetry in variations could give independent constraints on the physical models for AGN variability. In this paper, we use Kepler observations of 19 sources to perform analyses on the variability asymmetry of AGNs. We apply smoothing-correction to light curves to deduct the bias to high frequency variability asymmetry, caused by long term variations which are poorly sampled due to the limited length of light curves. A parameter $\beta$ based on structure functions is introduced to quantitively describe the asymmetry and its uncertainty is measured using extensive Monte-Carlo simulations. Individual sources show no evidence of asymmetry at timescales of $1\sim20$ days and there is not a general trend toward positive or negative asymmetry over the whole sample. Stacking data of all 19 AGNs, we derive averaged $\bar{\beta}$ of 0.00$\pm$0.03 and -0.02$\pm$0.04 over timescales of 1$\sim$5 days and 5$\sim$20 days, respectively, statistically consistent with zero. Quasars and Seyfert galaxies show similar asymmetry parameters. Our results indicate that short term optical variations in AGNs are highly symmetric.