A small scale structure model of jet based on the observation of microvariability

TL;DR

This paper presents a multi-region radiation model for blazar microvariability, using observational data to analyze flare decomposition, spectral evolution, and physical parameters of jet acceleration processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-region model that links microvariability observations with jet structure and acceleration physics, validated by extensive optical data.

Findings

Flares follow a lognormal amplitude and duration distribution.

Time delays between optical bands are several minutes and normally distributed.

The model successfully reproduces observed spectral and temporal variability trends.

Abstract

We developed a multi-region radiation model for the evolution of flux and spectral index with time. In this model, each perturbation component in the jet produces an independent flare. The model can be used to study the decomposition of microvariability, the structural scale of the perturbed components, and the physical parameters of the acceleration processes. Based on the shock acceleration model in relativistic jet, the influence of acceleration parameters on multiband flare parameters is calculated. We present the results of multiband optical microvariability of the blazar BL Lacertae observed performed during 89 nights in the period from 2009 to 2021, and use them as a sample for model fitting. The results show that both the amplitude and duration of flares decomposed from the microvariability light curves confirm a lognormal distribution. The time delays between the optical bands follow the normal distribution and amount to several minutes, that corroborates with both predictions from the theoretical model and the calculation of the discrete correlation function (DCF). Using the spectral index evolution and the simultaneous fitting of the multiband variability curves, we obtain the acceleration and radiation parameters to constrain and distinguish the origins of different flares. Based on the flare decomposition, we can well reproduce the time-domain evolution trends of the optical variation and energy spectrum, and explain the various redder-when-brighter (RWB) and/or bluer-when-brighter (BWB) behavior.