Stochastic Modeling of the Fermi/LAT Gamma-ray Blazar Variability

Abstract

We study the gamma-ray variability of 13 blazars observed with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). These blazars have the most complete light curves collected during the first 4 years of the Fermi sky survey. We model them with the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process or a mixture of the OU processes. The OU process has power spectral density (PSD) proportional to 1/f^alpha with alpha changing at a characteristic time scale, tau_0, from 0 (tau>>tau_0) to 2 (tau<<tau_0). The PSD of the mixed OU process has two characteristic time scales and an additional intermediate region with 0<alpha<2. We show that the OU model provides a good description of the Fermi/LAT light curves of three blazars in our sample. For the first time we constrain a characteristic gamma-ray time scale of variability in two BL Lac sources, 3C 66A and PKS 2155-304 (tau_0=25 day and tau_0=43 day, respectively, in the observer's frame), which are longer than the soft X-ray time scales detected in blazars and Seyfert galaxies. We find that the mixed OU process approximates the light curves of the remaining 10 blazars better than the OU process. We derive limits on their long and short characteristic time scales, and infer that their Fermi/LAT PSDs resemble a power-law function. We constrain the PSD slopes for all but one source in the sample. We find hints for sub-hour Fermi/LAT variability in four flat spectrum radio quasars. We discuss the implications of our results for theoretical models of blazar variability.