Can Turbulence Dominate Depolarization of Optical Blazars?

Abstract

We carefully examine the depolarization feature of blazars in the optical and near-infrared bands using the sample of Mead et al. Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) turbulence could be one possible reason for the depolarization of optical/infrared blazars when we apply the theoretical analysis of Lazarian and Pogosyan. We further identify in the sample that the depolarization results shown in most blazars roughly obey the form of the three-dimensional anisotropic Kolmogorov scaling. The effective Faraday rotation window length scale is not small enough to resolve the polarization correlation length scale in the blazar sample. The depolarization and the related turbulent features show diversities in different blazar sources. We suggest more simultaneous observations in both the optical/infrared and the high-energy bands for the study of the blazar polarization.