Locating the gamma-ray emission site in Fermi/LAT blazars from correlation analysis between 37 GHz radio and gamma-ray light curves
: Ramakrishnan V, Hovatta T, Nieppola E, Tornikoski M, Lähteenmäki A, Valtaoja E
Publisher: Oxford University Press
: 2015
: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
: MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
: MON NOT R ASTRON SOC
: 452
: 2
: 1280
: 1294
: 15
: 0035-8711
: 1365-2966
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv321
We address the highly debated issue of constraining the gamma-ray emission region in blazars from cross-correlation analysis using discrete correlation function between radio and gamma-ray light curves. The significance of the correlations is evaluated using two different approaches: simulating light curves and mixed source correlations. The cross-correlation analysis yielded 26 sources with significant correlations. In most of the sources, the gamma-ray peaks lead the radio with time lags in the range +20 and +690 d, whereas in sources 1633+382 and 3C 345 we find the radio emission to lead the gamma-rays by -15 and -40 d, respectively. Apart from the individual source study, we stacked the correlations of all sources and also those based on subsamples. The time lag from the stacked correlation is +80 d for the whole sample and the distance travelled by the emission region corresponds to 7 pc. We also compared the start times of activity in radio and gamma-rays of the correlated flares using Bayesian block representation. This shows that most of the flares at both wavebands start at almost the same time, implying a co-spatial origin of the activity. The correlated sources show more flares and are brighter in both bands than the uncorrelated ones.